The host champions Zazzle as a go-to platform for custom, on-demand gifts, praising its vast product range and over 30 million customers who trust it. They share personal anecdotes, like a friend’s dog-themed tie, to underscore the emotional value of customized items. The discussion shifts to a deep dive on the Cropsey urban legend, rooted in Staten Island’s history and tied to the real-life horrors of the Willow Brook State School—a facility that operated under dire conditions, with severe staff shortages, abuse, and lack of care. Geraldo Rivera’s investigative exposé revealed systemic neglect, including patient abuse, disease spread, and complete institutional failure, ultimately sparking the disability rights movement and leading to major legislative reform. The host connects this history to modern awareness, emphasizing the need for compassion and accountability. The segment concludes with promotional highlights of Quince, a brand offering ethically made, high-quality essentials like Turkish towels, and a special offer for first-time customers. The narrative blends personal experience, cultural lore, and social justice, showing how small consumer choices and historical truths can intersect to create meaningful impact.
You know, every now and then a sponsor comes along where, you know, they'll send you talking
points and you know what to say and all that. I don't even need the talking points. I use this
company all the time. I love them so much. We are working with Zazzle. If you don't know what
Zazzle is, you're really missing out in the world of custom gifts. I love a gift. I love a custom
gift. I love making them. I like getting them. I like all of it. And I have used Zazzle quite a
lot in my time. This is not just a place where you just like put a design on a shirt. I don't
know how true this is, but it feels like they have mastered finding a way to put a design on
anything. There's tissue box covers. There's golf balls. You could do the mug or the tote thing.
I saw one person in the wild one time with a tie from Zazzle and he had like pictures of his dog
all over the tie. Like Allison, I know you're listening and like you have pictures of Hank
on your phone and also you have Zazzle on your phone. So, you know, get to it.
It's so wonderful. If you wanted to get something custom, Zazzle is the place for you. And
everything is made on demand. So there's no out of stock. You just pick it and customize it and
it's handled. And over 30 million customers have trusted Zazzle with their most important gifts.
And so yours is next. 30 million. I did not know that. It's incredible. Zazzle is so cool. I use
it all the time. So please go try them out right now. Save 25% on your first order at Zazzle.com.
That's 25% savings on your first order at Zazzle.com. Go make something Z-amazing. Nice. Zazzle.com.
Not that I ever need a reminder of just how comfy my mattress
is. I'm going to show you how comfy my mattress is. I'm going to show you how comfy my mattress
one that I grew up with.
And it and the brutal part of it, too, was that the box legitimately looked very old, like it looked like it had been through something.
And so it wasn't just like, oh, someone misidentified this as vintage.
It was clearly vintage, but it was also just like 20 years old.
And I was it does hit you in the chest.
That's when you realize your bones maybe look that way, too.
Totally. I was like, oh, no, SPF.
It happened to be I went to a toy museum, I think it's in Houston, and they had I think this is the same place.
There was a second floor and you could go you went up and there were all these displays of toys by decade.
And I saw the 90s one coming and I went, oh, the fact that there's even a case.
Yeah, dude.
And because you're 80.
What year were you born?
The Internet says 84.
I'm actually 81.
Oh, OK.
Yeah.
Well, then.
So, OK.
90s for you is probably.
Like, extra sad to be in a display case.
Devastating.
Yeah.
Brutal.
I and I every single thing in there.
Not only did I own, but I still have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I was like, is should I save?
This is a relic.
Like, what's this now worth money or is it just sad?
Just sad.
All the plastics yellow now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brutal.
Anyway, I didn't mean to take over there, but I a lot of people on Instagram had followed the Renaissance.
Oh, story, because I was really vlogging about that being like, this is horrible.
It was 90 degrees.
It was awful.
So I guess that's why I drink this week and I drink a lovely little London fog that I had sent out, of course.
And here she is on all her glory.
Oh, shout out.
Beautiful.
And that's why I drink.
What do you drink and why I am drinking Diet Coke.
I jumped into it early because I had to.
But it is crispy and ice cold.
And I am drinking.
Beans.
Because I, you know, when you have your heart set, like you, someone's running out to grab something and you're like, hey, can you pick me up?
Whatever delicious treat that you want them to pick up and you have your heart set on it and then they don't get it and then you're devastated.
Of course, because, of course, you've been waiting for, you know, no, it's not even just like you were looking for it.
You now you've been waiting for it.
Yeah.
And and had you known something would go awry, you would have just gotten it yourself.
That's right.
That's right.
Or I would have lowered my whatever.
So so Dennis went to run some grocery errands and I was like, I would like the following items, please.
And also, can you get me a York peppermint patty?
Because it's my one of my favorite candies.
And I want to taste the sensation today.
And I'm like looking forward to it.
And just before we started recording, I got a text for him saying that that particular grocery store does not have any.
I don't believe him.
I I.
I don't believe him nearly through my phone.
And I just wrote, kill me.
And then I went on.
Because you know what?
When everything in the world is so dark and brutal, you just need a little bit of lightness and sugar.
And also, you've been together long enough that he knows the secret answer is you go to another store and you just get it.
And I think that he should have been home by now.
And I have a feeling that that is what he has done.
Yeah.
He's a good man.
No, he are.
But also, it's his fault.
Totally.
Yeah.
Well, you know, like the trope that like men cannot shop to save their lives.
It's it is really there is something very interesting about like the act of searching that I have found.
This is so weird because I am not a fan of that.
Like binary men are like this and women are like this at all, obviously, because they're binary is bullshit.
But like I have found that many of the men in my life struggle to actually locate things.
When they look for them.
Just can't see them.
I mean, it's like it's a whole thing on the Internet like that, which like reverse misogyny or whatever.
But if you like get something on Instacart or DoorDash and you see that it's a man picking it up, people just cancel their orders and try again.
Are you serious?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And it's got now a lot of men there.
They'll switch their name on their account to a woman's name just so people will like pay them.
But like every I mean, you should my sweet 1981.
Are you?
Got to go on on TikTok and you got to watch some of these videos because people will show like this is what I ordered.
This is what I got.
Like some people are like I wanted banana bread and they gave me a banana like like they're just not even trying.
You bless their hearts.
I have never told you the debacle.
Our listeners know about this, but it was a real heavy beat in last year for Halloween.
I did an Instacart order and I thought I was getting.
Was it Frankenstein?
Yeah.
I got a condom costume and I was like, how did we get here?
And then I ended up finding out that it actually was my fault because my finger slips and I press something even worse than a condom.
By the way, did you know they sell sperm costumes?
No, no.
And so.
So at first I was like, how did we get from Frankenstein to condom?
But honestly, maybe they were sold out of the sperm costume and he thought he was doing me a favor.
Totally.
I'll tell you when I didn't know that I'd click that.
I was like, how the fuck did we get here from Frankenstein?
The first thought I had was the packaging of the condom and Frankenstein's head both have right angles on both sides.
I wonder if he was looking at shapes.
I mean, also, he has the scar there.
You could like rip his forehead off.
Totally.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
He was on to something.
I just wasn't privy to that knowledge.
But that's I mean, you I'm embarrassing myself with how little I am online.
Like that is one thing I need to do is get.
Back online because like, I don't see any of my friends stories.
And anytime I go on Instagram or TikTok, I just get husky content, like just howling, like dramatic husky dogs, like not walking and screaming.
Like dogs, not like husky men.
No, no, no, no.
The actual dogs.
It's just husky, all husky content all the time.
So I don't even see my friends anymore.
I just see the algorithms like you like husky, want more husky.
And I'm like, I do want more husky.
I guess that's better than, you know.
The rest of what the Internet has to offer, which is all bad.
So it's bad.
It's not really actually good.
So the huskies sound nice.
So nice.
Husky content is great.
We are heading to Utah this weekend.
And one of the things I've always wanted to do is go to the hotel in Utah that High School Musical 2 filmed at.
And Allison and I are actually making that happen.
And for those who have watched that movie, you know that Sharpay.
Is in the pool there and talks about her towels imported from Turkey and my God.
Quince literally gave us some Turkish towels.
We have to bring them so you can get a picture of me in the pool at the same hotel resort.
And thank you, Quince, for giving me that slam dunk of a memory.
Wow.
They didn't even know what they were pulling when they created these beautiful, these beautiful Turkish towels.
They make elevated everyday essentials, not just towels, using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, washable silk, so much more affordable than luxury brands like, for
example, their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $50.
So you don't get that luxury price tag because they take that middleman out of it and work directly with ethical manufacturers.
Find the fall pieces you'll reach for most at Quince, especially if you happen to be in Utah on the High School Musical 2 set.
Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash drink and get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns now available in Canada and the UK, too.
That's Q-U-I-N-C dot com slash drink.
Well.
OK, I am glad that you're back because I felt bad that our our first recording together, I implied that there was another story I was going to cover.
And then I and I felt bad.
I was like, well, now I've already said it and I would like a New Yorker here to talk about it with me.
So I'm bringing you a story that I you probably know what I'm going to cover because I already said it to your ears.
But this is Cropsey.
Yes, Emma.
I'm so excited.
What do you know about Cropsey?
Because I OK, I was raised by New Yorkers, but this seems to also be like a strictly Staten Island thing for a while.
And then it maybe became more New York.
I'm if you could enlighten me if you can.
So here's what I know about Cropsey.
I know that it has to do.
I know that it's the only urban legend that involves Geraldo Rivera.
Yes.
Which if you don't know who Geraldo Rivera is, he was like a journalist and then became like a tabloid.
Sort of.
I mean, you'll get into it.
But anyway, he there was here's what I know.
There was a building.
There was like a like a hospital of some kind that treated people horribly and something something urban legend about a killer.
Yeah.
So you didn't grow up with this being like, well, Dennis is from Staten Island, right?
Yeah.
So Dennis grew up with the Cropsey idea.
OK.
And he can you take him off airplane mode?
I didn't ask him.
Yes.
I'm going to text him right now.
But how are we doing on the Yorks?
And tell us everything about Cropsey right now.
York update?
Question mark.
Question mark.
I'm going to say, what do you know about Cropsey?
I know that he's been to the actual abandoned hospital.
He hated it.
It made him feel very sad and awful.
It looks horrible.
It's it's he said just the energy to like you could just tell, you know, if you believe.
In ghosts and you believe in energy lingering, he's like the energy, there's bad.
I think he.
was raised with the like don't go in the woods there's a killer sure um which is what cropsy is
pretty much cropsy okay yeah and i'm so glad you're covering this because there is this like
massive gap i have in knowledge i know that hospital joel roldo rivera something something
killer honestly you know exactly what i would have known like if i lived near satin island in
the 70s or 80s i would have only cared about the juicy bits and those are what you're saying yeah
yeah yeah yeah it's the juice it's the good scary stuff but that's truly that's truly all i know
okay perfect well uh i this is a bit of a deep dive i'm glad that you even mentioned
heraldo rivera because um i did not know that it was going to turn into this i thought i was
going to tell you a fun urban legend and we were going to move the fuck on but apparently i have
entered the true crime world and i i didn't mean to but we're switching it up whatever so it's so
funny because my true crime today enters the paranormal and woo woo world so like oh gosh
that's amazing so actually between the two of us everyone is getting their full dose of true crime
and ghosts great okay perfect okay that makes me feel a lot better yeah of course well here we go
cropsy is quote satin island's personal boogeyman hell yeah and uh he is a legend passed down to
girl scouts uh and also just summer campers because that's well we'll get into it but
they're the they're the main um victims to the tale oh okay there are many takes on cropsy's
origin but the main through line is that in the 1970s a man in town usually he's called a
respectable man in town okay which we know means that he probably has a lot of secrets and like
dark right past yeah he was only like having one affair yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
a man in town was camping at the lake with his wife and kids when tragedy befalls his family
so no matter what version you hear it always starts that way okay some say that he snapped
and he killed his family with an axe and then ran off into the woods and is now bloodthirsty for more
oh and since there's a summer camp right near these woods you could be next yeah hear about
round town these parts of the woods we've been here and snapping an axe and all night
end quote thank you for saying that part for me um
god we rehearsed that for so long man i'm glad we nailed it i actually texted it to you exactly
as is and i i thought you'd stumble but you nailed it thank you others say that he actually died at
the camp when he was a young man and now seeks vengeance on the new campers another story is
that he lost his own son and is now looking to steal children for a second chance at fatherhood
which like would be the craziest start to your fatherhood it's like daddy how did we meet well
well i hate there are people out there i've heard like i have never met one of these people but
there are stories that they're like people just realize one day they were kidnapped what i i just
did a story um on the little girl named ricky jean bryant um who was there was a house fire
it's a little bit like the solder children there was a house fire um everyone survived except she
just disappeared and some of the theories are that she was sold um or taken just so horrifying
to be someone's child oh there was um i hate that this is my frame of reference but there's a law
and order svu episode that's very fascinating about all that it's nuts people just be growing
up realizing that the aunt is mom or you know stranger is mom but mom is back in washington
state i do know people with um there's someone in my life who was kidnapped by both of their
parents at this at different times which is crazy oh my god
gosh everyone's fine now but like it was it was just a really interesting era everything's fine
tumultuous marriage i'd probably say right a tumultuous divorce if you can't tell last yeah
oh yeah but it's it's fine now everyone's fine everyone has a relationship with everyone
it just was like everyone was kind of crashing out um okay moving on so the most popular version
of this story is that a man lived or worked for a summer camp okay and and when i say most popular
version of this story is that a man lived or worked for a summer camp okay and and when i say
most popular version of this story is that a man lived or worked for a summer camp okay and and when i say most
lived or worked for a summer camp okay and and when i say most popular i mean this is at
popular i mean this is at
popular i mean this is at to my knowledge this is the post 80s most
to my knowledge this is the post 80s most
to my knowledge this is the post 80s most popular story there might have been a
popular story there might have been a
popular story there might have been a more popular story in the 70s that
more popular story in the 70s that
more popular story in the 70s that dennis knows
dennis knows
dennis knows but essentially movies ended up coming
but essentially movies ended up coming
but essentially movies ended up coming out about this and that's how cropsy
out about this and that's how cropsy
out about this and that's how cropsy became
became
became super duper well known okay and so the
super duper well known okay and so the
super duper well known okay and so the stories in the movies ended up kind of
stories in the movies ended up kind of
stories in the movies ended up kind of becoming the
becoming the
becoming the the default storyline this has it has
the default storyline this has it has
the default storyline this has it has remnants of um
remnants of um
remnants of um like freddy
like freddy
like freddy you know
you know
you know you mean jason like jason sorry freddy
you mean jason like jason sorry freddy
you mean jason like jason sorry freddy freddy and jason in my head are the same
freddy and jason in my head are the same
freddy and jason in my head are the same and i have to see one before i can
and i have to see one before i can
and i have to see one before i can know what the other one is i i know what
know what the other one is i i know what
know what the other one is i i know what you're saying and then when i saw the
you're saying and then when i saw the
you're saying and then when i saw the movie freddy versus jason my brain
movie freddy versus jason my brain
movie freddy versus jason my brain exploded i don't even who's who um you
exploded i don't even who's who um you
exploded i don't even who's who um you can't be in the same spot
can't be in the same spot
can't be in the same spot but um i i agree with you and a lot of
but um i i agree with you and a lot of
but um i i agree with you and a lot of people
people
people also agree with you that's why i knew
people also agree with you that's why i knew you were that's why i knew we were
you were that's why i knew we were
you were that's why i knew we were going this way
going this way
going this way basically a man lived or worked for a
basically a man lived or worked for a
basically a man lived or worked for a summer camp campers played a prank on
summer camp campers played a prank on
summer camp campers played a prank on him that got out of hand yeah usually
him that got out of hand yeah usually
him that got out of hand yeah usually involves a uh the camper starting a fire
involves a uh the camper starting a fire
involves a uh the camper starting a fire which goes out of control and severely
which goes out of control and severely
which goes out of control and severely burns the person
burns the person
burns the person and or kills his family and now he is
and or kills his family and now he is seeking revenge on new campers who had
seeking revenge on new campers who had
seeking revenge on new campers who had nothing to do with this
nothing to do with this
nothing to do with this yeah i mean well it's a circle of life
yeah i mean well it's a circle of life
yeah i mean well it's a circle of life so you got to i guess generational
so you got to i guess generational
so you got to i guess generational trauma yeah anything with therapy
trauma yeah anything with therapy
trauma yeah anything with therapy exactly right so um because there are so
exactly right so um because there are so
exactly right so um because there are so many versions that mention
many versions that mention
many versions that mention his burns from this prank from a fire
his burns from this prank from a fire
his burns from this prank from a fire cropsy is now often described as having
cropsy is now often described as having
cropsy is now often described as having some sort of different appearance okay
some sort of different appearance okay
some sort of different appearance okay so it's either burns on his face or he
so it's either burns on his face or he
so it's either burns on his face or he has scars
has scars
has scars a lot of the versions of crops here that
a lot of the versions of crops here that
a lot of the versions of crops here that he has um a hook for hand
he has um a hook for hand
he has um a hook for hand oh wow they're like getting all the
oh wow they're like getting all the
oh wow they're like getting all the classics
classics
classics i know i was like you don't see a lot of
i know i was like you don't see a lot of
i know i was like you don't see a lot of hook hand anymore
hook hand anymore yeah yeah it's like that is so specific
yeah yeah it's like that is so specific
yeah yeah it's like that is so specific it's super i think it's like one and
it's super i think it's like one and
it's super i think it's like one and done it's it's that urban legend and
done it's it's that urban legend and
done it's it's that urban legend and then candy man obviously and that's
then candy man obviously and that's
then candy man obviously and that's that's it i had a teacher in college who
that's it i had a teacher in college who
that's it i had a teacher in college who had a hook for a hand and he played the
had a hook for a hand and he played the
had a hook for a hand and he played the piano
piano
piano beautifully and i still don't know how
beautifully and i still don't know how
beautifully and i still don't know how he did it i do
he did it i do
he did it i do want video footage of that um me too man
want video footage of that um me too man
want video footage of that um me too man it sounds like we're jumping an
it sounds like we're jumping an
it sounds like we're jumping an additional hurdle i would like to know
additional hurdle i would like to know
additional hurdle i would like to know how that's possible totally piano's
how that's possible totally piano's
how that's possible totally piano's hard anyway and then when you are
hard anyway and then when you are
hard anyway and then when you are working with a
working with a
working with a a hook i mean like you're like four
a hook i mean like you're like four
a hook i mean like you're like four fingers fewer at least than you would
fingers fewer at least than you would
tiktokers who have like prosthetics and but they also 3d print so they just 3d print whatever type
of prosthetic they want for themselves that is so cool and i feel like there's got to be i don't
know what what your teacher was doing but these days there's got to be like a one that helps with
piano or something i'm sure you can even eat it sounds like that guy handled it i don't know you
figured it out you totally figured it out um so this guy maybe has a hook for a hand uh and he
uses it of course not to play piano but to drag the children into the woods of course and inversions
with the hook hand oh sorry where he does not have a hook hand he has um some other quote weapon on
him which is often like a trusty axe to just kill the children on sight okay uh when the story is
is told from like a counselor's perspective uh i don't know if this is a a universal it happens
every year situation or this like happened once and it was so monumental we had to write it
about it but it sounds like the campsite and the counselors really went like crazy about trying to
convince people that cropsy was real and like the counselors were in on it where they were like one
of them would all of a sudden have a broken hatchet where they're like oh i was trying to defend
everyone and i got in a fight with him and now it's all twist and then we had to call the cops
and they told this whole dramatic story that everyone agreed upon amazing and it ended with
like a shootout but then cropsy got away and he's still in the woods and they never found a body and
i was like well this is so like they're eight they're eight year olds like yeah
no let's let this is this is uh this is everyone going full in on just like not understanding how
terrified children can get you know what we're appreciating the theater of it all yeah totally
the the the counselors are having the best time they've built lore but the kids are just horrified
i mean if you're i would imagine if you're like a 16 year old counselor or 18 year old counselor
or something like this it's your dream to finally have something interesting to like
brag about when you're in the woods i feel like i'd get so bored if i were some more counselor so
yeah i feel like it
this is exactly what i would do fully i would yes and so hard to make this story just absolutely
insane and ridiculous i would probably be the one who's like buying fake blood i would go a little
bit too far i would go too far i'd be the one who ruined it i think you'd like leave a letter like
with cropsy written in blood oh yeah well since dennis knows about it yeah you should just leave
a little note from him in fake blood i'm sure you have fake blood in your house i have in every
room i there was one time that i found fake blood he was out on his morning walk and i wrote
something like i see you in fake blood on his mirror and he came in and he was like bethany
because that's you know it's not frightening anymore that's just how you are yeah no one of my
um
during covid i think you were writing him a lot of menacing notes i i remember one where you
he was like looking through a shoebox like how would you know he'd ever look in there you must
have thrown it in thinking in eight years this will be hysterical uh-huh yep and he unraveled
this like dirty letter or something and just said seven days like something yo gentle listener if
you have if you live with someone and you are not doing long cons like that you're cheating
yourself out of a really fun time because also every day leading up to the moment they finally
find that thing that you so invigorating oh it's the best tuck it in their their like high school
yearbook that's down in the basement that they haven't opened in years like dig into the bottom
of a box and just tuck something in there just go absolutely feral and it will be very fun for
everybody i promise did you do some bit where like you had a hundred of something and they
just kept showing up yes i think so i think i did and i think i left one
number out on purpose like i think i just it was i was so mean and i have one that he hasn't found
that uh i did i think five years ago and we've been together for seven and it's something that
he sees every single day and doesn't realize that there's a secret on it is he gonna listen to this
like can you tell us or it's it i don't want to ruin the surprise actually don't i don't even want
to no no tell us the day it happens i'll give you i'll give you a i'll give you a hint it it is
something it is something that i've done on the back of something that i say he never looks at
the back of i see so like that'll be a long one yeah it's a long one wow can anybody see yet why
we're friends i like every every time i get an update on like how you're torturing dennis it's
just i get so giddy so thank you it's the best it's the best time well so this uh this cropsy guy
he always escapes no matter what the storyline is he's always still out there and therefore he has
become this cautionary tale of don't go wandering off in the woods because he'll he'll get you and
he'll drag you through the woods with his big hook hand um and when he would successfully take the
kids according to all these legends um it was his calling card to leave behind a small fire as an
homage like when he was attacked with fire oh oh gosh so if ever there was a little fire in the
woods they'd go oh there he is there he is and you know it was some counselor out there like
burning leaves just to freak the kids out there is something very frightening about a fire by
itself i will like a contained fire by itself that's so scary and it's one of those things
where like christine and i are often saying if you heard a noise in the middle of the night do
you hope it's a ghost or a robber like it could either brings bad bad energy and if you see a
contained fire by itself it's like i kind of hope that that mother nature is just
setting this ablaze because otherwise there's someone very close to me and i don't see them
yeah yeah hopefully there was a lightning strike perfectly in the center of this
circle of rocks that like just lit on fire and it's not just like somebody out hunting
for people 100 yeah so he'll leave little small fires he's also apparently um and when i say
apparently as if this has really happened these are just all things camp counselors have said
sure uh another calling card is he would burn his name into something
including these imaginary children who have gone missing when they if one was ever found
the name cropsy was burnt onto their body like just really painless dark so um when he's dragging
these children to the woods because obviously this is super duper for sure happening yeah for
sure where is he dragging them where is he taking them well into the many abandoned ruins nearby as
you've mentioned already this area these woods were near a campground
or are near a campground so it wouldn't make sense why that would be the end of the story
it's like oh well there's those abandoned ruins out there don't go out there don't go exploring
because that's where cropsy lives and that's where the kids die and so basically there's a
few options we have here because these ruins were actually multiple properties so one was
an abandoned tuberculosis ward okay horrible on its own yeah a lot of people think that's where
cropsy lived um another one it's called the new york farm colony but it was also once known as a
quote poor farm um yeah so that's also super creepy especially since it's abandoned yeah and
the most important one which you have mentioned is the mental institution uh that as it was called
something much worse than um called the willow brook state school okay god they used to give
such pretty names to such awful things you are so on the ball literally so many people said we had
no idea what was going on over there because it sounded like a country club so we just never
thought about it
totally oh absolutely yeah it's just like the the happiest place on earth and they're just
not feeding children yeah basically so um and i'll say before i jump into the willow brook stuff
so the whole story of like well cropsy's this guy and he it the whole camp camper story where he is
now a victim of a prank and now he's attacking children the other different version of the story
is that nothing ever happened at a campground he was actually an escaped patient from this hospital
now lives in the woods and one of the ways to i guess survive is by catching children that are at
the nearby camp oh there's so many versions of this so many versions every person's like he has
a hook for hand he has an axe he has a big fat knife he uses his bare hands he uses his teeth
like it's yeah every story is totally different so i would be curious what dennis heard he's and
he and he texted me back he said that he's heard many things some things uh
he said i've been to that hospital though at night when i was a kid is what he said but the the thing
about it being an escaped patient oddly is more frightening i think to me because it sounds like
it could actually happen it feels it will so my my um hometown urban legend was also of an escaped
person an escaped patient from a mental hospital and he ends up living in the woods and surviving
off of bunnies and they call him the bunny man oh god yeah because like when they shut down places
like this they didn't actually they didn't care where they went right they didn't do a great job
of caring for the people who were in there and so what do you do if you don't have anywhere to go you
go back to the place that you know even if it's abandoned and then you make it work and you're
hitting all the right notes that's exactly right is that's frightening so again i thought i was
just going to be covering an urban legend and honestly we could end there if you'd like but i
did do a bit of a deep dive here on willow brook which
feels important to cover yeah dude and i want geraldo yeah he big g's in here for sure yeah
yeah yeah big mustache and a delicious mustache like well well groomed yeah it's thick speaking
of thick knives you've got a thick knife across his front front lip top lip this front lip
sometimes people have a mustache and i go let's do away with that this man deserves one yeah he
was born with that mustache he was so willow brook uh opened in the 40s it was supposed to be a um
mental hospital and ended up for a moment being a um just a hospital an army hospital for world war
ii because they just needed it yeah and then they ended up switching it back to the school
that they originally attended um it was the only home in the area for people with intellectual or
developmental delays and at one point it truly was i did not know this at the time that it was built
it was the biggest and best facility in the world for you to send your loved ones that had delays oh
gosh or differences um but after enough budget cuts which happened very quickly it worsened
steadily until the place and its conditions were unrecognizable which is an understatement
especially when you think that it was supposed to be the world's bleeding facility and taking care
of people and i'm sure they needed the money and so they're not going to communicate that hey don't
send anyone else here because it's not actually as good as the reputation and so nobody like no god
it's awful you think you're sending a family member to a really good place yeah and in
hindsight so a documentary came out about cropsy and a lot of locals who remember the the history
of willowbrook were saying uh well staten island for a long time was a literal dumping ground
for a lot of things so i guess a lot of people also thought they could just dump their kids here
which was like such a sad way to look at it yeah but i mean also it's confirmed because they're they're
kids are treated like garbage garbage yeah good point um few knew what was actually happening the
first time we ever got a glimpse into it was in 1965 when senator rfk not current rfk
jr but his father who gave a more so than this guy yeah um rfk he did a surprise visit
at the hospital like yoo-hoo let's see what's going on here and he went oh my god what the
is happening oh my gosh he ended up doing a press conference he called it a snake pit
and he promised to improve its conditions but of course it didn't really go anywhere
what was why didn't he improve the conditions what was he doing what was he doing
honestly don't know i don't know but i don't like it i think the the conditions improved
a little bit but at this point my understanding because i watched three documentaries on this
by the way damn it was a long night um because i thought oh i'll just watch this quick 15 minute
one and then i it just devolved yeah and i was up all night so um the
the what my understanding is is that they did put more money into it but they didn't
need money as much as they needed like some actual
fucking reform gotcha um and so they could keep things clean like they basically also gave them
enough money to like maybe hire a couple more people but they needed like hundreds more people
they needed a massive overhaul not yeah like they i guess helped but it really at what cost truly
yeah yeah okay like i saw there was one um source i looked at that said at one point they fired so
many employees that they needed like a thousand more employees for it to actually have been a
functioning building oh my god at one point there was at one point there was 6 000 patients here
and they had like 30 people like it was bananagrams it was fucking bad so after um
rfk came here saw this tried to help but nothing really happened um another a reporter came out
her name was james
curtain oh my god jane wait not the actress from there was an actress jane
i don't know jane personally i know that she wrote this article i don't know not jane curtain
there was a comedic actress named jane curtain no no with a c i got so excited i'm really sorry
i didn't mean to derail it back no i was like oh my god is there i love a fun fact and if i missed
one please tell me um so no jane curtain with a k okay
it was given a tip by two of the staff members to come in and do a piece on how bad it was
and this was like after rfk had came it had been a few years and i mean the people who did work there
um the documentary stated this um the the 50th anniversary of this place just had a whole bunch
of press come out and those people were also saying this like it's it was not the employees
fault like they were maybe some of them were not meant to be there but there were employees who
were really trying to help they just there was just no way you could watch them because they were
many people they were just so in over their heads that's awful and so these two staff members were
like jane curtain get in here right now and write an article please help us and so she came in when
the article came out a bunch of pictures were in the article so parents saw pictures of what was
going on here and that was the first time they actually saw anything it started a bunch of like
parent protests and like people trying to figure what was going on some people i think were taking
their kids out but i think at this point they still didn't really know what was going on um
like a lot of parents actually gave pushback because they they thought that jane curtain
went in there and was like um ragging on a facility that's like the world's best and like
what i think they were in denial because it's like what else were they to do with their kids
if they couldn't have them at the at home yeah totally so there seems to be a half and half of
people really giving a shit or a bunch of people like doubling down okay so um and when this all
happened though it caused enough of a kerfuffle
that the higher-ups who don't give a shit at all they were the ones that were constantly doing
budget cuts they ended up firing the two guys who told jane curtain to come in no that's like
to silence them i hate this i hate i hate those two people whoever those i hate them
well so then these two people who were like i guess the tip-offs the the tips i don't know
what they're called the people who told whistleblowers whistleblowers yeah so then they
got fired one of them when he got fired he
this is like such like a fun twist of fate um he got fired and he went home and he put his hand in
his pocket and realized he still had the key and he was like somebody needs to know more than what
jane curtain told them like that should be the beginning of this but someone needs to end this
yeah and then he called his friend geraldo rivera oh my god okay so this mr mustache himself future
famous journalist geraldo rivera he was not very famous yet um but he snuck up on him and he was
a camera and he borrowed the key he snuck a camera in and he caught some of some of the horrors of
this facility oh my god wait did he he just let himself in he had um i don't know about the first
time around he i think he just let himself in or he had like someone another whistleblower who like
kind of helped him out yeah i'm not totally sure but he does come back a second time later and has
an escort that's the great thing about a facility that is understaffed is if you show up and you're
up at night no one knows no one's there it's a huge facility and there's like one guy and he's
asleep at the front desk you just let yourself in the back door baby it's like a like um like
an ocean's 11 situation but it's like let's save everybody please yeah so he shows up and to this
day he has done very few interviews about it but when he has he just breaks down crying to this day
he's just yeah and especially because he's actually stayed friends with a lot of people
that he met that were unfortunately victims in this
um hospital so in the last interview i watched it was him and one of the guys that he actually
interviewed back in the 70s oh and they're like still buddies it's like very it's very
sweet but he kept in touch oh that's nice i like that so um what he saw this is a combination of
what he saw that day and what some of the stats are in general of this place but the population
at its worst was triple the max capacity it was understaffed with like so few people and not only
that but a lot of those people weren't even qualified they weren't doing
checks there was one guy who was like straight up a criminal and just lied about who he was and
was able to get in there and work there oh my god and also even worse than that instead of hiring
additional help that was needed they thought well if we just give like this one more able-bodied
patient two dollars to watch the rest of the room so then they had just patients watching patients
which is like first of all not i mean just not safe but also not i mean like not safe for the
patient who's been put in charge at all and also you're saying like oh we'll pay two dollars an
hour two dollars to do what he'll never be able to spend the two dollars he's here he's stuck here
yeah is there a commissary is there some sort of delightful store no probably not there's probably
not magazines and gum that they can buy they're probably just like trapped and now someone one
of your fellow roommates gets mad at you because you're the charge and now you're absolutely not
safe like that's or i mean like it was like i think some of the patients were like oh my god
they were saying more um i don't know what the right phrasing is but they had less uh less delays
than other people uh-huh if i'm saying that wrong please in the comments i am open to criticism i
just want to make sure that i'm being sensitive here yeah of course um so it sounded like they
were quote more capable to watch a room but also like they're also a patient here like they don't
even know what they're maybe they don't know what they're supposed to be doing maybe it's not their
fucking job no it's not their job it's literally like they should be someone should be watching
me motherfucker why am i watching them hang on like yeah if you're if you're in awful conditions
and like you're you're in this scenario where everything sucks at least you don't have to be
in charge that's the one thing you don't have to do is go to work because right you're you're
basically a prisoner and now they're actually making that's awful that's awful and they were
truly prisoners i mean the the rooms were completely it was just a big open room there
was no privacy there was no doors there's no doors on the bathroom stalls there was no
beds people were just like oh my god i'm gonna go to the bathroom i'm gonna go to the bathroom
just sitting in chairs or on the floor naked because they didn't they with the budgets they
didn't have enough money for clothes for clean clothes so if you had clothes they weren't clean
everyone was just covered in like feces and urine they were just like you could hear just
screaming and wailing and nobody's watching anybody and the population at at the time when
it was the world's leading it was supposed to be one staff member for every four patients and it
got to a point at its worst where it was upwards of one staff member for 60 patients
that's 15 times the amount and because of that even the hardest working employees they just
couldn't take care of everybody so even the people who were trying their best at this place they were
expected to feed every single patient within three minutes which i'm at i i don't eat in three
minutes and like no and people who might need extra time would take longer than me like three
minutes is not enough and they were like well we don't even have time to think about anyone's diet
so they just basically had this mush that they would just go around in a bowl and they would
just put a spoon in this guy's mouth a spoon this guy's mouth a spoon in this guy's mouth
um no clean clothes no privacy no activities no lights sometimes like when this guy
when her all those snuck in the lights were off it was just they were all sitting in the pitch
black there's no simulation there's there i mean it was solitary confinement but without the
solitary it was just you're sitting there there's nothing to look at you wake up you sit in the
chair and then you eventually fall asleep and do it all over again tomorrow there was nothing going
on and imagine like if somebody is somebody is violent like just like not because not just
because they are a person who is violent it is dark and you are not protected and no one cares
if you get attacked no one cares like there's yeah or even if they do they're all the way over
there watching 60 other patients yeah totally yep yep yep and uh heraldo himself he was quoted in
the in his own special his expose saying there's no rehabilitation no training nothing there was i
it was completely unsupervised just because there weren't enough eyes people would be
locked away behind multiple steel doors former staff would say like when i first started working
there they gave me this like heavy steel key and it was to open one door then i had to do that walk
down a hall go to another door walk down that to go to another door just to open it up and it was
a room full of toddlers by themselves like it was just locking them so far away that nobody knew
including like parents like people didn't know what was going on at all they just thought i'm
dropping my kid off and at the time i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die
it was advised yikes that like it's you can drop your kid off here and then quote
move on with your life and just know that they're taken care of and don't think about it and don't
come visit like it was so nobody knew that and they thought they were giving their kids the best
life possible at the time yeah um yeah another former uh employee actually called the buildings
living coffins because nobody who could have helped even knew to go check on them maybe higher
ups knew about the buildings but they weren't going to go look in there and waste their time
no they don't care no and i'm sure that on a certain level they had like distanced themselves
from any sort of humanity that these that these inmates at this point had you know i think it's
a little bit like oh well they don't know what's going on they they don't understand what's going
on so it's and it's like no they absolutely do they're screaming for a reason they're literally
like i mean they want help at the very least they want at least to be nourished and loved
of course not that hard yeah like yeah
you
um her all those said that it smelled like death in there yeah um there were reports of rats bugs
like so many us like the kids anyone there was also like adult wards and people just had parasites
in their stomachs there was like it was it was shocking if someone didn't have a parasite
eventually when they stayed there sure there was disease if there was illness at all it was getting
spread to everybody else in the room the worst part if there is a worst part is that patients
were purposely for vaccine research being infected with hepatitis
oh
no wait i didn't know this i never heard this what the fuck dude they said every every patient
by six months uh if you stayed there for six months you had hepatitis just because
of the way it would spread and one patient god one patient i mean geraldo rivera's interviewing
the patients and being like what do you think about this place and all of them are like
bad it's very bad help us um and one guy who ended up being his friend later he was seen
interviewed 50 years later that guy he was like it's a disgrace to be here it's just like so sad
and he's like all i want to do is go to school and learn how to read that's all i want to do
oh my god that's and you can only imagine like i haven't even touched because there's no
information about it the physical or sexual abuse that might have been going on with these
patients too and the parents are never coming to pick them up they're just locked away
no one's ever gonna know the the level of despondency that that these people must have felt
just awful and yeah i mean that's what i was thinking too with especially with the pitch
darkness and just everyone being in a room i'm sure that there was just rampant sexual assault
going on yeah all over the place herald even said that while he was there he just saw like
several several men just masturbating because i mean yeah what else you're gonna do like i mean
these like but it's just an open room and it's like doesn't matter if there's kids there doesn't
matter like if women are there that might be uncomfortable doesn't matter if like just a
random man's there that's uncomfortable it's just it nobody's being tended to there's no
privacy but it's just it's just people are just it's just left to their own devices and and with
no help that's unbelievable and like i said none of the families knew about this they actually found
out when heraldos expose aired so they were watching tv and just saw there was one woman who
was like my brother was a little kid and when he when we sent him there and he died four years ago
and after his four years after his death he was like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so
sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so
sorry and now we have to wonder like how did he actually die jesus christ um because he said
something like he had like an illness but it could have just been like two kids got in a fight and
nobody helped him yeah now so anyway i said he came back for a second time that he filmed stuff
secretly i think the first time around because i don't think he was supposed to be there they
certainly didn't want that out so no i'm sure not they didn't have time to mop the floors before he
came the first time
funny you mentioned that because the second time around he actually this he has not put out the
expose at this point yet he just filmed a little bit and then he called and was like let's see if
they'll give me a real tour of this place and they said yeah come on down and they he happened to be
brought over to one building where every child was very clean and intended to and he was like oh i
think i've seen enough and he left and then he literally jumped the fence and went back without
an escort and went into the other buildings and everything was as he saw the first time it was
so they were absolutely
trying to cover it up i can see i know like i knew that this was the making of him but i didn't
realize how skillfully he played that you know yeah yeah i mean there's literally footage of him
jumping the fence and just like really quickly running into another building like he's and like
young geraldo rivera was a snack too he was not in a fence like by the way in today's world either
as like a 60 or 70 he's also still very yummy looking he's looking good yeah he's got a full
head of hair on his head
and his face
very jealous of the uh dog sitters that are coming over while allison and i are gone this weekend
because i have a whole box of hungry root that um i'm not gonna be able to eat in time nice of you
so i said how about i pay you and also feed you so damn that's a good deal they it was the middle of
the night and they said we'll be there yeah yeah hungry root is awesome because every month it like
gets more every time they send a box of hungry root they get more and more and more and more and more
it's more customized to you and what you like and what you need and what your family members like
um which is awesome they every time they send something i discover like a new product or a new
item that i love um and they've got awesome brands and yeah i guess i should start house sitting
because it sounds like a good gig no it's uh it's customizable all the way down to either what you
like to eat what your partner likes to eat what your kids like to eat and then how how often you
want to be cooking in the kitchen how little time you want to be in the kitchen you know how
dedicated you are to cooking i mean there's there's just so many options on their menu every
single meal looks delicious it's really saved my butt quite a few times when i'm really craving
dinner immediately so you're gonna love hungry root as much as we do for a limited time get 40
off your first order plus get a free item in every box for life go to hungryroot.com
slash drink and use code drink that's hungryroot.com slash drink code drink to get 40
off your first box and a free item of your choice for life so he ended the piece by saying
pretty much kind of what i just said a couple minutes ago they're like it's not necessarily
about money like we need reform we need change he ends the whole thing by just saying we demand
change like this is so fucked up you cannot possibly nobody knows what's going on and like
there's a whole community of people who like just fucking need help he also ended up um in other
parts of his documentary he went to other facilities around the country that were actually
taking care of their patients oh damn that were actually better than the
the best facility in the country yes and cheaper he was like this place is 14 a day for your kid
this and meanwhile um willowbrook is 21 so you're paying more for like them to be abused and
tortured and yeah um so anyway he he did a good job of making sure people are like it is possible
like you just have to fucking care yeah yeah that's a good point yeah that's a good point
it's easy to become despondent i would imagine and just be like well what are we supposed to do
yeah i mean like in the other facilities everything was clean and they were like of course we clean
our bathrooms what are you fucking talking about like and every kid like had a labeled cup and like
the doctors were like this i know i promise i'm not this was not like a revelation to me but keep
in mind this was the 70s it was probably a revelation of somebody yeah that the doctors
that he was interviewing at the better facilities they were like they're just people like i'm like
yeah like it's shocking that someone needed to fucking hear that yeah but um anyway so
basically this expose blew the fuck up he ended up winning a peabody award for this
amazing and it quote sparked i don't know if you knew this i did not know this when i heard oh some
old creepy old school in the woods um that expose that he did this is a quote sparked the beginning
of the disability rights movement i didn't know that at all i did not either but that was the
beginning of like after that came out they started passing all these laws to make sure that people
in the disability community or and people with developmental and intellectual delays were all
taken care of and that there were like rights to like how they should be treated in facilities if
they were there um because the americans with disabilities act was passed in the early 80s
right i think i think so early 80s so that makes sense timeline wise for sure and i mean just now
um i'll get i was going to do this at the end but i'll give them a shout out now that
um 50 years since the expose happened only a couple years ago and the new york council of
developmental disabilities ended up putting out a new documentary um to honor the 50th anniversary
called the path forward remembering willowbrook in case you'd like to watch that oh hell yeah in case
you'd like to watch the original documentary by geraldo rivera it's literally on geraldo rivera's
youtube channel called geraldo rivera and and it is called uh willowbrook the last disgrace
damn that's that's a good title so um especially because the one person he ended up i think keeping
in touch with was the one who said this place is a disgrace so i think it was like a nod but yeah
um anyway so i'm sorry that we derailed there but it felt important to mention um
that we have come very far thank god but who knows how much longer it would have taken to
even get to this place if it weren't for that expose i don't know if it ever would have gotten
there i i feel like it would have been something else it would have been like you know we need the
building for a different purpose and so we're going to close the hospital or close the school
and no one ever would have known and i feel like
oh i i have a feeling that it just wouldn't have been discovered well also like it feels very
um on the nose i don't know exactly how to articulate what i'm thinking but hopefully
you catch on to what i'm saying here it's very interesting that you know these the people in
this community
are already so silenced and need so much help and now the the history of this monumental school
that was horrible and ended up causing all of these like civil rights for um for people with
like extra needs it it's shocking that now that building is just known as like where cropsy lives
isn't it crazy like they just can't win like you just can't you just can't not that anybody wants
to remember the stain that is willowbrook but at the same time like so it's such a historical
thing and like it's just like oh it's in the woods and that's where like teens think that
like cults go like it's not remembered as like it's not like you know stonewall where you go
to stonewall in the west village in new york and you know that this was like the birth of you know
the lgbtq rights right movement right you know that that's what it's for it's not like urban
legend started here i feel like that it should be the same thing for that hospital it should be like
this was the birthplace of our country actually recognizing that everybody's
a person and everyone should be made sure that they can actually survive and move through the
world uh-huh you're right you're right it's like no scary guy with a hook i'm just like man and the
fact so anyway it felt necessary to bring that up before i just said oh and some old abandoned
school and by the way it's called the willowbrook state school because they funded just enough they
had just enough funds to be deemed a school but not but like so much more should have because
they were their kids there they were also supposed to be like in school while they're there no and so
so they got like school funding technically and called it a school so that way people thought the
kids were going to school but it was just a it was just a loophole basically they were just putting
them in a cage essentially yeah and calling that cage a school oh my gosh that's wild for obvious
reasons the hospital shut down although it took 15 more years fuck man crazy and i i heard that
it was because they really did try to like
make it a school and they didn't make it a school and they didn't make it a school and they didn't
make it better and like try to improve it but so many people were like just fucking shut this thing
down like yeah it's too late if we've learned one thing from this documentary it's that like
money is not going to help this unless you're willing to spend like a billion dollars because
the amount of cuts that you've made that need would need to be put back in place there's no
way you'll ever agree to that and like it's just never going to be good enough so just shut just
shut down it's like buying a really old home where the it's like rotting from the inside you're like
we're gonna paint it yeah exactly you need to rip the house down there is there's mold
it's like it's a really like i guess honorable gesture for you to give us five more dollars
thanks but yeah um so basically when it did close uh some people as you have already um suspected
did not have anywhere to go so they ended up still living on the property along with other
in general unhoused people and um i will say on top of that a lot of people who were able to go
back home it sounds like they were either confused or they were either confused or they were either
confused or didn't understand and so a lot of people would end up just wandering back there
because they thought that's where they were supposed to be oh god uh so there was just a lot
of afterlife yeah not in the ghost way a lot of people just still in the woods in general and
um i it's my understanding is that the willowbrook school and the tuberculosis ward and the um
the what's it called the poor farm i i feel like i don't know if that's like the right way to put it
probably not but i feel like that's what they called him and i don't think you probably have
one of even those anymore so we don't have a better name for it right right because we don't
farm our poor people out to like be held which is what i'm guessing that is i you know i feel like
um well my understanding of those three locations is that there were tunnels that connected each of
them or maybe it was just tunnels that just connected the the hospital with the school
and the farm is its own thing but so then not only were people moving into the woods they were now
in the tunnels tunnel just the word tunnels i know makes everything i just want to die but i also
love it because it's so scary i used to explore a lot of abandoned landmarks in my hometown growing
up and i would go through many a wood but the second there was an enclosed space where there's
only one way out i'm i wouldn't do it there's just no way it's it's so scary and i'd be able
to scatter no yeah yo you're either running towards the danger or away from the danger and
the danger can still see you because it's a straight shot yes exactly tunnels are the worst
thing ever yeah and also i mean the classic you just never know what's around the corner if you
have to like peek um my i i i don't know how good your sense of direction is you strike me as someone
who has a good one i feel like you are you deceive yourself uh okay if you have a bad sense of
direction aren't tunnels horrifying because you don't have any landmarks and yes getting lost is
that's just a labyrinth now you're just in a labyrinth i i've been in a bunker tunnel before
and that was crazy too because it's just like out of a movie long long long long long long long
why were you in a bunker tunnel m uh well i've been in a few but one of them was uh the most
recent one was alison had a family reunion and she ended up finding this like airbnb that was like
a mansion and this guy clearly thinks the end of the world's gonna happen because he had he built a
full system with like like a like a nerve center with security cameras everywhere and like it was
very weird but it was also just like wildly easily accessible like you just open a door that you
thought was a closet and then it's just and you didn't lock that off nope i think because it was
cold and he was like he left it open for us though we could walk from that place to the other part of
the estate like it was like a i've never been in a fancier location ever he had his own entire like
i don't mean like a a gym room like he had a whole like three-story building that was as big as the
mansion with like its own basketball court tennis court pickleball court pool table area billiards a
whole gym the size of a real gym i was like alison how much did we pay for this but so he also had a
whole bunker set up and there was like halfway through was a bedroom which was so weird because
on either end it was just long tunnels so you could rest halfway through because it's such a
you need nappies basically i was like or maybe it's like super duper like that's the last place
a bomb could get you i have no idea oh yeah good point that's like the safest most underground part
of it dude bunkers are so scary if there's a nuclear bomb i don't want to be in a bunker
because i don't want to be in a bunker for the rest of my life now you're in a bunker
the the day that the apocalypse happens uh three two one yeah i'm out bring it that's it i'm gonna
stand i'm gonna be i'm gonna just stand and welcome it with open arms like oh me too like a dumb hippie
because i do not want to i see what they were doing in the walking dead i see how unhappy they
look in the last of us they don't look happy at all i'm like to survive what and like the only
people who are gonna survive like i'm sure there'll be a few handfuls of people like me where
i'm like how did i end up here but most of them are gonna be a bunch of those like gun toting
government preppers and i'm like so now i get to spend the rest of my life with them yeah no that's
see you in the next whatever's next has to be better than this boom i mean i often say that
the reason i don't drink is so that way when doomsday comes i can get blasted as fast as
possible you're gonna be drunk so fast i won't even feel it i'll just feel like whatever i took
a beer and now i'm i'm gonna be fine fully comatose uh okay so back to cropsy because
that was actually the topic of the story if you recall um after that long window deep dive so i'm
uh i did not expect to do all that so one person who ended up living in these woods amongst all
the other people who are now you know unhoused in some way or maybe just like it didn't even have to
do with previous patients just people now see open buildings to live in and squatters are now
in there but one of the people who lived in these woods who was also connected to willowbrook was
this man named andre rand i'm gonna call him rand okay for the rest of this okay so he was um
yeah so he he actually once worked at willowbrook as a janitor it's unknown if he contributed to
any of the abuse there but we do know that he was not a great guy to children
oh in his separate life so like you can kind of guess that maybe he was up to no good here as
well yeah that's not doesn't seem like the kind of thing that you would leave behind at home
if you found unsupervised children at your workplace as well 100 okay he um for example
like he was not a good guy at all he was once arrested for the attempted uh essay of a nine
year old awesome and he what a nightmare also once kidnapped 11 children from a ymca and drove
them to the airport and we don't know why that was just it sounded it's he just said you want
to go for a ride woohoo let's get in the bus and then he took them all to the airport and
one of the kids who's now an adult and was being interviewed was like i think there was something
much more nefarious that he was going to do and then realized he was in over his head because
there were 11 of us jesus yeah getting arrested for that and uh went to jail for 10 months 10
months good 10 months that's it and that's for kidnapping 11 kids not for trying to
rape a child um so and also in general in the town parents knew that he lingered around kids a lot
of his own crimes against him.
children so we can't confirm or deny that he was doing anything when he worked at willowbrook but
it was a place known for crimes against children and he also committed crimes against children so
i can't imagine he was um pure of heart no and there was what one staff member for every 60
people is that what it was so yeah he he had some probably unsupervised children running around
for sure and at this point in the story um willowbrook is post scandal people now know
what's going on but it's still open it's on its way to being shut down okay and rand he is no
longer working there but he has begun living in the woods and is when it officially shuts down
he'll be living on the site permanently so let's remember he was scary he worked in the woods or
no he he worked at this mental hospital where he was committing crimes against children and
children next to a summer camp so we're starting to see maybe the inner workings of an origin story
here for crops totally um so what made things a lot worse because a lot of kids at this point when
they would go to the summer camp they'd be like oh yeah we all hear about cropsy there's this guy
who like takes kids into the woods ha ha ha that could have easily been just um inspired by the
in the woods living at this facility sure and that's why sometimes you would like hear screaming
and stuff like that a bit it was actually because of a much an equally bad thing yeah of you know
kids are being harmed yeah but they probably thought it's some spooky little story but they
were actually hearing a a bad interpretation of a real horror so oh jesus um so what really freaked
them out because at the time they were like oh it's just the story and like it probably isn't
true and everything and they were like oh it's just the story and like it probably isn't true
and everyone's just trying to keep us from going out and exploring in the woods around the same
time satin island separately starts having an odd string of children going missing oh my god
like has nothing to do with the scandal of the children at the hospital but at the same time
there's a whole other big situation going on with the kids of satin island so in 1972 keep in mind
that's right when the cropsy stories start picking up yeah right in the 70s the first kid that goes
missing is a five-year-old named alice and then in the 80s there's a seven-year-old named hollyann
an 11-year-old named tahis a 22-year-old named hank and a 12-year-old named jennifer a lot of
them had intellectual delays and i don't know or developmental delays as well i don't know if
they're if that has to do with like them they weren't like patients at the hospital so it's
just very odd that two separate things are going on in satin island both of them have to do with
kids with disabilities
yeah it's very weird it is weird and it seems like
yeah it seems like those children were being chosen because and the one and the adult i guess
the 22 year old maybe because they may have been easier to manipulate but it is very strange that
that's just a recurring theme yeah and so one of the theories though is that well this rand guy who
worked there as a janitor at one point maybe was hurting people in this hospital had previous
hurt children yeah now all of a sudden these children with disabilities are going missing
maybe they somehow reminded him of the hospital or i mean it's total speculation but it's like
the only common ground is that this guy is always around kids with disabilities yeah yeah even more
interesting is that before all of these children went missing rand was the last person to be seen
with a lot of them so we don't know if he did it but he has a lot of things going against him right
now yeah he doesn't seem like the greatest person to be seen with a lot of them so we don't know if
he's the greatest guy he doesn't have a good track record and it would be stupid to not
draw some conclusions based on right it's too layered it's too layered here yeah he so he was
a painter in alice's apartment complex he was talking with hollyann at a corner store and near
his car he was released from prison the night before uh tahis was he disappeared and then he
was seen at a diner with hank um and so he was near all of them then they go missing and he was
not actually a suspect for any of those
missing persons cases until the last one in 1987 which happened to be the year that the school
closed fun fact oh but jennifer who had down syndrome she goes missing after taking a walk
one of the last times she was seen was with a man with a green bike similar to the one that
rand was seen a week later with missing for 35 days this jennifer girl none of the others by
the way their bodies were ever found oh my god oh my god and uh
nobody was ever um brought in for as a prime suspect for them but this one jennifer girl
she was missing for 35 days the entire community did this huge search party and it did lead to her
body being found in the woods near willow brick less than 500 feet from rand's campsite that he
was living on yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna go ahead and say he did it is that is that gonna get us
i think he did i think he did there are a lot of people who think he didn't do it really but um
the fact that he had just been seen with her first of all he'd been seen with the other kids as well
right before they went missing he was seen with her right before he went missing or right before
she went missing her body was found 500 feet away he has previous crimes against kids the parents
knew he was fucking creepy yeah like he already worked with disabled uh with kids with disabilities
and um it's just it's not looking good for him so basically he was taken into custody
quickly yeah good finally it only took you what 10 years and five kids and he was taken into custody
five kids and there was little evidence that he actually did anything it was just eyewitness
testimony where it's like oh i saw a guy with a bike like his so that really i wish there was
more evidence than that but it he did get first degree kidnapping of jennifer which was 25 to life
and then four years before he was up for parole he did like 21 years and then he got tried again
for one of the other kids that went missing and he got another 25 to life good good finally because
because of this though he did he did a lot of work and he did a lot of work and he did a lot of work
and he did a lot of work and he did a lot of work and he did a lot of work and he did a lot of work
retroactively become the prime suspect for all the other missing kids because they're like well
what are the odds but you know so some think that he just kidnapped them other people think that
um he kidnapped them and killed them some people think he was actually like kind of trafficking them
for satanic cults in the woods because this is also during satanic panic of course i forgot yeah
of course of course it's just the perfect storm because it's also stranger danger era yes yes so
fucking cropsy and all the scandals going on in the woods with this school it's just like not the
place for kids to be no wonder everyone was saying don't go in those fucking woods totally well and
also if you think about like we look back now at the satanic panic and and sort of laugh and roll
our eyes some of us do some are back in it but like imagine all of this other horrible stuff
in your community is actually happening and is actually true like these horrible abuse allegations
of at the school turned out to be very true these children are actually going missing and getting
killed so
i would probably also be like yeah the satanic stuff is probably also real at this point i mean
it's like a weird confirmation bias especially because the um in the tunnels and in all of these
you know abandoned buildings now there are signs of people going out there and doing nefarious
things and there's people who are maybe jokingly maybe not putting like pentagrams on the floor and
graffiti on the walls and you know leave it up to any paranoid mom all the kids are going missing
you're gonna just start blaming whoever
you can totally yeah um so some say that he actually like he was only um like the guy who
would collect the children and then bring them out to the woods for cults and covens to use them in
human sacrifice like crazy stuff the more people you ask the more different the more versions you
get of this okay um also i just want to say like no one's talking about it and maybe i'm fucked up
for saying it but like he also clearly had some mental stuff going on and i think that's a good
one that does not like excuse anything he did but nobody's talking about how like like his mom
also had some delays and was institutionalized at one point um you can just see in like footage
of him that like something's a little off like he's his eyes are bugged out he's acting really
like odd he's drooling he's like i mean he's just like he's something's going on there and like
he also can be a very dangerous man two things can be true at the same time totally but no one's
mentioning it and i don't know if that's true i don't know if that's true i don't know if that's
maybe i'm maybe something's wrong with me for mentioning it because maybe it's like that
shouldn't matter but i feel like it's like no one's thinking maybe he was just not uh you know
a good thinker and he just was hurting people or he thought he was friends with them or i don't
know but he's also like a sexually assaulting man maybe he knew exactly what he was doing i don't
know i mean i think also we have a tendency to want to make the bad guy fully bad and i think
that it's harder if you understand
that he was failed on a systemic level from the very beginning too because it makes him a little
bit more human and it makes him a victim even though he also was then a perpetrator and should
have been held accountable but it's harder to be like that man bad boogeyman bad guy if we know that
he has a humanity to him and he was also failed you know he was failed i i think he was failed
and also i'm totally i i feel like i'm
kind of guessing here that something's going on with him but i but i was watching the footage
and i was like something is up and no one's talking about it and everyone was like
oh he's drooling something he's crazy and i'm like whoa like he's probably i mean no he could
just like be have a thing he could have a thing going on i don't know i don't know why i'm
defending a fucking horrible man but i but i think that you are right to bring it up i think that it
is worth bringing up because everybody it is harder to not just have black and white bad good
but like what have we learned from this story is we need to support people who need help from a
very young age because otherwise he was probably without the support that he needed and wasn't able
to be pushed onto a good a better path yeah and i do wonder like was he working um because he was
working at at the institution but it's like was he working there because he was one of those people
who got paid like two bucks to watch the others or like was he um was he trying to hang out with
people that were similar to him and that's why he kept or maybe he
was trying to be near kids maybe one because maybe he's fucking liked kids and that's
off yeah or maybe he was like they understand me at a different level i don't fucking know
it's anyway it was like the only job you know he may have just been trying to get a job and that
was like the one job he could get it doesn't seem like they were or his mom was also and it was was
there so maybe he was like oh well he was mom wasn't there but he was like oh my mom was at
one of these maybe i want to take care of my mom i don't fucking know but i just no one's saying it
so i just thought i would say it and if i'm wrong please
correct me but i just i felt like it should be mentioned like sure yeah totally something was
certainly off about him yeah anyway um and i mean off like as in like he gave the creeps but i don't
know i'm trying not i don't mean to be offensive no you're i don't know he gave that he gave the
creeps because he was legitimately doing really bad things and was legitimately creepy creepy guy
but also there was probably some deeper issues going on that could have been helped and were not
thank you yes thank you for getting what i'm trying to say totally totally totally
i'm like sweating i like don't want to thank anybody um okay so the last thing i'm gonna
really talk about here is just like a quick moment for um getting back to cropsy is that
the the three-way venn diagram that all of this kind of creates for us is that we're near a summer
camp like that is true this this facility is near a summer camp the facility is in the woods where
kids are and were getting hurt then the second part of this venn diagram is that there was a guy
rand who lived in those same woods who worked at that facility and he was like oh my god i'm
that has been arrested for hurting kids the third part is that a string of children in town have
literally gone missing one was found dead in the woods next to this guy's campsite and he went to
jail for it so all at the same time this is happening by campsites full of children and
counselors are coming up with stories to scare their campers so it would make sense that
through the small town gossip people have heard about this and now it's
just perfect fodder for something to scare kids with and there's no way to know for sure if
willow brooks history and rand's background were in fact the combined inspiration for cropsy but
he'd already earned a reputation for like being the staten island monster and now we're trying
to tell people about a monster in staten island so it just it just adds up that's that's wild and
and and it has to it has to be part of it and this is also like the most truth-based urban legend i
think i've ever heard in my life right yeah that's what i thought too i was like i've i really thought
i was going to be talking for 10 minutes and then i was like oh my god i'm gonna be talking for 10
minutes and then all of a sudden i'd be like well i've got nothing else and then all of a sudden it
turned into like this whole fucking true crime and a lot of kids like i told you before they
really thought that this was just like a silly story but when kids actually started going missing
they were like oh fuck i think cropsy's real nightmare nightmare a lot of people really
started treating cropsy like a real person because they were like there is someone out there and i
actually in one of the documentaries someone said that cropsy became like local slang for
a maniac in the woods of course and so it's like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know
even if ran wasn't the cropsy and the stories he was in fact a cropsy yes oh my gosh yeah totally
yeah so in that way maybe that's how the two of them ended up associated with each other
it's just like the the names kept getting mixed up so yeah yeah um anyway so it has now become a
common campfire story for locals it has many projects have been done inspired by cropsy the
main one is that in 1981 the movie burning man which i told you about in the beginning of the
told you i watched in preparation for this um it was not good no um
and arguably even worse was the movie that came the year after called madman which i'm pretty sure
they were the exact same movie written by two different people at the exact same time and there
must be some beef between them i'm sure i feel like i've heard i feel like i've actually heard
about this that there like actually was well burning man um first of all there was a lot of
scenes and i was like what the fuck is going on and then guess who fucking produced it staten
islander harvey weinstein no so just another crime on top of another crime but i was like
why the fuck does every girl have to be topless for no fucking reason yeah dude 70s and 80s horror
films are like yeah they're just boobs on boobs on boobs gross well so i will say a less horrible
fun fact about burning man is that it was miramax's first movie oh congratulations congrats and it was
the movie debut for fisher stevens who was the first movie to debut for fisher stevens who was
i did not know this in real life his name is stephen fisher his stage name is fisher stevens
wait the man the man with the perfectly round head in the thin neck
really yeah his name is actually stephen fisher but he his stage name is fisher stevens also this
was the movie debut for holly hunter and jason alexander of seinfeld wait no shut up wait what
does he play does he please tell me he plays a sexual god no no
he jason alexander plays like the guy who thinks he's cool but he's not
i swear to god i think i've seen this movie in a previous life because this is pinging something
but i have the memory of a goldfish well now you have a date night with um dennis as long as he got
you your yorks so yeah it's a real will they won't they because i still don't know well the movie um
is what i said this earlier but this is what got the story out beyond staten island so now this
the story that happens in burning man is the main story of what happened to cropsy even though it
might not have been the original default story of cropsy gotcha um but it's basically a a burn
victim which let's talk about people with disabilities and exploiting them why are we
this whole thing is like they played a prank they should have gone to fucking jail for like
attempted murder and then he's just a burn victim who is like grieving and yeah yeah
sue me he wants to kill some kids yeah yeah no i yes if they yes i've side with him i mean not
real life but like not in real life but in the movie i'm like uh there's certainly um things
there's onions to peel here that's a good way to put it there are onions feel um and then the last
thing i'll say is there was a documentary that came out in 2009 called cropsy fun fact it has
91 on rotten tomatoes and was played at the tripecta film festival but it was made by two
staten islanders who wanted to like discover who the fuck cropsy was they tried reaching out to
ran to do an interview he ended up declining um but uh
basically is there anything else for me to say oh uh just a fun fact that today willowbrook
buildings the buildings there are still abandoned in some areas but other parts have become the
campus for college of staten island whoa what yeah and the ruins part is said to be very haunted
people see a man in the woods of course they hear footsteps voices laughter and a hook scraping the
tunnel walls geez fun fact it's a real man and you should be actually running because it seems like
most of this stuff was real yo that is so that is so scary and then it's very scary and then it's
very scary i know and it's also just crime after crime after crime and somehow harvey
weinstein got involved in my fucking notes i don't even like that at all talking about
dangerous awful men who needed to be in prison a long time before they were
like that that's that's absolutely crazy and i don't think i fully understood how um true so
much of it was i also think i i think that the filmmakers who made crop c went on to make another
documentary about urban legends i think they have another one that they came out like a few years
later um because yeah because they i know they covered the hook hand car thing in that one so
classic yeah yeah yeah am that was fantastic i'm so sorry i talked for a full fucking hour
though so unnecessary but this is great this was really really really informative and awesome
now you can go tell dennis all about his own i love when we can mansplain to men their own
childhood um it's like actually this is what happened you know what i know so much about
staten island if you've ever found yourself awake at 2 a.m googling like what to do when dog gets
skunked and then like spiraling um you know you've probably been where i've been and uh there's always
something with these lovely animals of ours and luckily today's episode is sponsored by the aspca
pet health insurance program
when you enroll in an aspca pet health insurance plan you get a 25 amazon gift card it's a little
treat for you while you're doing something great for your pet and the program offers
customizable accident and illness plans making it easier to get your pet the care that they may need
so if your dog gets skunked like ours but also even you know just the little minor stuff if you
want to just go yeah it's nice to just have that worry yes you don't want the worry over your head
to explore coverage visit aspca pet insurance.com drink that's aspca pet insurance.com drink
eligibility restrictions
apply visit aspca pet insurance.com amazon terms for more info this is a paid advertisement
insurance is underwritten by either independence american
Insurance Company, or United States Fire Insurance Company, and produced by PTZ Insurance Agency
Limited. The ASPCA is not an insurer and is not engaged in the business of insurance.
Hey, it says here to talk about a job candidate who caught our attention in an unconventional way.
And I would say like we were, that's all we wanted. We wanted someone to catch our attention
in an unconventional way. So we said, zip recruiter help. And they said, here's some
ways to do it. And all of a sudden, Eva barrel rolled into our lives. And in an unconventional
way, she literally brought us candy and then told us her astrology sign. She said she believed in
ghosts. And then she like, it was a slam dunk interview. She really made us laugh. I mean,
really just nailed it. When you're hiring, it's always helpful to know who really wants a job,
but you don't need unusual stunts, like a barrel roll. You just need zip recruiter.
On zip recruiter, qualified candidates can add a personal note to tell you why they're
interested in your job. So you can see the most motivated people right away. And right now you
can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash drink. And zip recruiter has a new feature that
shows you the most.
Interested qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. In our world,
that means Eva would have just been the only person we looked at.
She would have barreled rolled in within a minute. Maybe it would have been really wild. Yeah.
Zip recruiter makes it easy for amazing candidates to get your attention. Four out of five employers
who post on zip recruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.
Try for free at zip recruiter.com slash drink. That's zip recruiter.com slash drink.
Meet your match on zip recruiter.
Okay.
All right. Bethany, I cannot be.
More excited. I, you nailed it last time. I'm sure you're going to nail it this time. I'm sure.
Well, thank you. I'm so nervous to do this for a couple of reasons. Um, first of all, I don't know,
this wasn't on purpose, but this is the second story in a row that is Spanish language based.
So, so like me with my like high school level command of Spanish, I, I am going to be absolutely
doing my best. I'm going to,
give it my like absolute college try on pronouncing words and like, I'm going to do my best, but I
set myself up for failure and I, and I am, I'm just super nervous about it.
I understand there have been a few stories I want to cover in, um, in Japan soon. Uh, like there,
there's a few ghosts I've wanted to cover and the, so many things, so many articles I'm like,
I have to find a translator or like,
Yes.
I have to, because I don't want to just rely on like Google Translate for all of my sources.
Right.
That I can't be. So I have avoided that because I'm, I don't know. People also please in,
in the comments, if you have a suggestion on how, how to handle that, because I'd like to cover
more like international stories, but just don't know the means, please let me know. And maybe
also Bethany, because how did you do that? Did you go through a translator or what'd you do?
So I did,
I, I used like the website translator to get a baseline, but I also skimmed it in Spanish to make
sure that like the cognates matched at least to I, cause I could, I could tell if like, essentially
this is what it was saying, but then I also watched, um, YouTube videos that had subtitles.
So at least I knew that the person talking was saying it correctly. And then like the subtitles
probably, hopefully we're correct.
Got it.
Um, but,
but also this involves a lot of science and I love science and I am pro science,
but I am also not a science expert. And so this, this, I get it. I would, I'd be scared to,
you're like, Hmm, how could I really tack on an easy project for myself? Uh,
science in Spanish. Um, and then I'll just tell that whole story. Okay.
You know, when you're too far into turn back now, yes, that was me like halfway through this. I was
trying to figure out how to do a different topic. Like we're in this now. So we're just the only way
out is down and through.
I'm proud of you. There was one episode. Um, I, I, I must've told you this before,
or maybe you listened to it there. I was, I thought I was covering the back rooms.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then I, or I think, I think this is right. I thought I was covering the back rooms,
but I ended up covering like black holes and, and I ended up, it was really hard. And I was like,
and I've gone too far. And then,
and then halfway through, I was like, I don't, I don't understand why everyone wants me to cover
this. This isn't at all what I would usually cover. And I, but I was like, okay, it's what
the people want. And then I realized at some point I was like, Oh, this actually is a totally
different topic. And now I've just, and I spent the whole week trying to figure out how to break
down quantum physics and black holes to best explain to people. So I I've been there and I
have faith in you. Thank you. Sometimes you just have to do it. I I'm going to, I'm going to get
into it, but, but so.
So I watch a lot of makeup YouTube. And, um, one of my favorite things is the Jaclyn Hill
lipstick gate debacle. Do you know about this? I know nothing long story short makeup and YouTube
influencer, Jaclyn Hill years ago, put out her own line of makeup and the lipstick that came out,
all of them, but not all of them. A lot of them had hair on them. What like hair, like not like
just coating, but within the lipstick itself, people were pulling.
Out hairs and like it became this whole massive thing. And it was so funny because you saw all of
these YouTube creators who suddenly just had microscopes and suddenly knew science. And all
of these people just were like, we learned science now. And they started breaking down and like
cutting up and they had like, they had, um, scalpels cutting into the lipstick. And it's
like, they all became chemists overnight. That's what I'm doing now. Women in STEM.
It's very much like, I, I feel like if that is how science was presented to us, it's like, okay,
now we're going to dissect a lipstick to find hair. We would have done that like that. I would
be like, shut up. I'm in like, I will learn. I will learn. One woman was wearing a half full
hazmat suit. It was great. It was great. Did we find out why there was hair? I feel like that's
a mystery of its own. So, okay. Thanks for asking. So here's what we think happened.
According to Jacqueline, they were not hairs. They were
fuzzies leftover from the white cotton gloves they were using for quality control.
Not so much a quality control, the gloves, if they're that loosey goosey. Okay.
That's right. But based on, um, some reverse image searching, enhancing quadrant four and some deep
diving that a TikToker did, she discovered that the, the lab that she believed that Jacqueline
used, which was based in Florida. And she did this by comparing pictures that employees from the lab
had posted on their LinkedIn to images that Jacqueline had posted of her at the lab doing
quality control. The, they noticed that there was a day that the cat had gotten loose and someone
had brought in their dog multiple times in this like sanitary chemistry station building, allegedly
animals had been out and about. And like, like ones that shed, this isn't like even a golden
doodle, right? No, no, no, no. These are like shedding. So, so they think that the Harris were
from that. And then they think that some of like, there were metal shavings in some of them and some
of them had like grease bubbles. And so they think that it was like a combination of them trying to
push this line out too fast and not doing a great job at heating and cooling the actual liquid in
the right way that made it like cohesive and together. Um, but we, and we still don't know
for sure. Cause Jacqueline's just not telling us. Well, I mean, it sounds, I mean, I mean, it sounds,
she would, I would be tight lipped too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's infuriating, but boy,
we're going to get to the bottom of it. One of these days, I'm going to crack the case wide open.
That's right. Well, in the meantime, while we work on lipstick gate, I'm going to tell you the story
of Jacobo Grinberg. Some people say Jackabo. Some people say Jacobo. I'm going to say Jacobo,
because that feels like it sounds like the most best and that the most best, it sounds like the
most best. I'm so nervous. Maybe just the last name. We're going to call him Grinberg. You know
what? Calling him Grinberg. Okay. Oh my God. I'm sweating.
Okay. So if the name sounds familiar to you, it might be because a documentary about him
came out in 2020 called the secret of Dr. Grinberg. Um, okay. It was on Netflix. My Netflix told me,
I can't watch it. I don't know if it's not available. Just like the cheapest level of Netflix.
Maybe you have to, I don't know. Maybe it's not in America. I don't have a VPN anymore. I apparently
stopped paying for it. I don't know where it went and everything's falling apart on everything. So,
but there is a Netflix documentary out there and it looks really good.
Sick. Okay. Great. So, all right. So in December of 1994, one of Mexico's most brilliant and
controversial scientists, a man named Dr. Grinberg vanished without a trace.
Just as he was preparing to perform a groundbreaking experiment that he believed
would have proven that telepathy is real, but then he disappeared.
He thought too hard. He thought too hard. He thought too hard. I, I, my first thought was
like, this has to be like, he has the cure for cancer or something. Like, so maybe that, that,
he has the cure for cancer or something. I, I, my first thought was like, he has the cure for cancer
or something. Like,
newspaper called him the einstein of human consciousness and that's kind of what he's
been called ever since so that's crazy it's it's why you call him meinstein oh
m i mean i have one skill let me use it but it's it's a good one um so he spent his life
essentially attempting to bridge the chasm between like rigorous scientific based neurophysiology
understanding the effect that the brain has on the body and also connecting that to the miraculous
world of mexican shamanism and the spiritual practices that were a huge part of mexico in
you know generations and cultures going back he was trying to like bring these two things together
sure
so he was born on december 12th three days before my birthday uh but different year 1946. okay
born in mexico city and his family members were from poland they were jewish they spoke yiddish
and they had come to mexico in the early 1900s so he was also incredibly connected to that side of
his heritage as well like he had these deep roots going back to the jewish culture and his family
back in poland he had these deep roots going back to his family back in poland he had these deep
roots going back to the jewish culture and his family back in poland he had these deep roots
that he felt very connected to in mexico um i i have i don't think i've ever met a uh like a jewish
mexican person i had no idea that i didn't know that could be a combo but of course you know like
but yeah of course it makes sense yeah i mean anything's possible but it's like it's just like
that's a rare that's a rare duo you don't see that one a lot you don't and you don't hear about
it for sure no so um it's not super clear what kind of relationship he had with his dad but we
know that he was really really close with his dad he was really really close with his dad he was
really really close with his dad he was really really close with his mom
with his mom
with his mom and when he was 10 his mom was diagnosed
and when he was 10 his mom was diagnosed
and when he was 10 his mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor
with a brain tumor
with a brain tumor and then she passed away after just two
and then she passed away after just two
and then she passed away after just two years when he was 12. yeah
years when he was 12. yeah so this obviously just devastated him
so this obviously just devastated him
so this obviously just devastated him and
and
and so there was a woman in his family named
so there was a woman in his family named
so there was a woman in his family named hilda elterman
hilda elterman
hilda elterman uh who was his cousin and
uh who was his cousin and
uh who was his cousin and she was super close to him these two
she was super close to him these two
she was super close to him these two cousins were like
cousins were like
cousins were like tight and she said that after uh
tight and she said that after uh
tight and she said that after uh grinberg's mom passed away he became
grinberg's mom passed away he became
grinberg's mom passed away he became quote obsessed with otherworldly events
quote obsessed with otherworldly events
quote obsessed with otherworldly events um she said that like a lot of times
um she said that like a lot of times
um she said that like a lot of times after his mom passed away when they took
after his mom passed away when they took
after his mom passed away when they took pictures you would always see him
pictures you would always see him
pictures you would always see him looking up
looking up
looking up in the photos like he always seemed to be
in the photos like he always seemed to be
in the photos like he always seemed to be sort of not with us yeah and just
sort of not with us yeah and just
sort of not with us yeah and just searching like trying to find something
searching like trying to find something
searching like trying to find something i know it's so it's it's just kind of
i know it's so it's it's just kind of
i know it's so it's it's just kind of breaks your heart like 12 is so young
breaks your heart like 12 is so young
breaks your heart like 12 is so young yeah and especially to be to be so close
yeah and especially to be to be so close
yeah and especially to be to be so close to your mom yeah yeah
to your mom yeah yeah
to your mom yeah yeah so when he was 19 um he had moved to
so when he was 19 um he had moved to
so when he was 19 um he had moved to israel he lived there for a year and
israel he lived there for a year and
israel he lived there for a year and that's when three important things to
that's when three important things to
that's when three important things to him happened so he was only 19. the first
him happened so he was only 19. the first was that he met a woman named lizette
was that he met a woman named lizette
was that he met a woman named lizette arditi
arditi
arditi uh who would become his first wife
uh who would become his first wife
uh who would become his first wife oh okay the second is that he met a
oh okay the second is that he met a
oh okay the second is that he met a british medium
british medium
british medium and this was the first time that he had
and this was the first time that he had
and this was the first time that he had learned about
learned about
learned about seances and he was in that's a
seances and he was in that's a
seances and he was in that's a monumental moment for all of us totally
monumental moment for all of us totally
monumental moment for all of us totally absolutely the first oh yeah the first
absolutely the first oh yeah the first
absolutely the first oh yeah the first time someone you know puts you in a
time someone you know puts you in a
time someone you know puts you in a circle you hold hands and the table
circle you hold hands and the table
circle you hold hands and the table starts chanting oh it's awesome
starts chanting oh it's awesome
starts chanting oh it's awesome um and i haven't felt anything like it
um and i haven't felt anything like it
um and i haven't felt anything like it it's so long
it's so long
it's so long not since drinking my crystal light have
not since drinking my crystal light have
not since drinking my crystal light have i had such a rush
i had such a rush
i had such a rush so
so
so so this medium used
so this medium used
so this medium used um a ouija board and like
um a ouija board and like
um a ouija board and like grinberg didn't take this as oh this is
grinberg didn't take this as oh this is
grinberg didn't take this as oh this is really fun or it's a game or you know
really fun or it's a game or you know
really fun or it's a game or you know like what what a lark he was like this
like what what a lark he was like this
like what what a lark he was like this state maybe we can talk to them this you
state maybe we can talk to them this you
state maybe we can talk to them this you know and of course the fact that his
know and of course the fact that his
know and of course the fact that his mother had passed like there's
mother had passed like there's
mother had passed like there's there's a reason why spiritualism became
there's a reason why spiritualism became
there's a reason why spiritualism became so huge after world war one and like the
so huge after world war one and like the
so huge after world war one and like the spanish flu like people had lost so many
spanish flu like people had lost so many
spanish flu like people had lost so many loved ones and we wanted to connect to
loved ones and we wanted to connect to
loved ones and we wanted to connect to them so this is you know it's it makes
them so this is you know it's it makes
them so this is you know it's it makes total sense totally it's not abnormal
total sense totally it's not abnormal
total sense totally it's not abnormal so
so
so um his first wife lisette which is one
um his first wife lisette which is one
um his first wife lisette which is one of my favorite names
of my favorite names
of my favorite names remembered a time when he told her that a
remembered a time when he told her that a
remembered a time when he told her that a spirit had told him that his watch
spirit had told him that his watch
spirit had told him that his watch would stop at a specific hour of the day
would stop at a specific hour of the day
would stop at a specific hour of the day so like let's say it was 6 p.m
so like let's say it was 6 p.m
so like let's say it was 6 p.m and then his watch did stop at 6 p.m and
and then his watch did stop at 6 p.m and
and then his watch did stop at 6 p.m and she said that was the moment that he
she said that was the moment that he
she said that was the moment that he was hooked he was like this is a thing
was hooked he was like this is a thing
was hooked he was like this is a thing yeah so then he started studying
yeah so then he started studying
yeah so then he started studying kabbalah um and he studied it in a city
kabbalah um and he studied it in a city
kabbalah um and he studied it in a city that has a super long history of mysticism and meditative
mysticism and meditative
mysticism and meditative practices and just earnest study
practices and just earnest study
practices and just earnest study and for the rest of his life he would
and for the rest of his life he would
and for the rest of his life he would look for ways
look for ways
look for ways to integrate all of these different
to integrate all of these different
to integrate all of these different spiritual and mystical concepts into
spiritual and mystical concepts into
spiritual and mystical concepts into his academic work because he was also
his academic work because he was also
his academic work because he was also super smart he was brilliant
super smart he was brilliant
super smart he was brilliant cool okay yeah so
cool okay yeah so
cool okay yeah so he left israel came back to mexico city
he left israel came back to mexico city
he left israel came back to mexico city he earned his degree in psychology at
he earned his degree in psychology at
he earned his degree in psychology at the national autonomous university of
the national autonomous university of
the national autonomous university of mexico
mexico
mexico cool and then the 60s happened baby
cool and then the 60s happened baby
cool and then the 60s happened baby psychedelics oh counter culture
psychedelics oh counter culture
psychedelics oh counter culture he was into it he left his wife he
he was into it he left his wife he
he was into it he left his wife he moved to new york city and he became
moved to new york city and he became
moved to new york city and he became even more radical with his views on like
even more radical with his views on like
even more radical with his views on like otherworldly phenomena like he was he
otherworldly phenomena like he was he
otherworldly phenomena like he was he was into this now he was probably
was into this now he was probably
was into this now he was probably wearing little circular sunglasses
wearing little circular sunglasses
wearing little circular sunglasses and like
and like
and like not going to work and just having sex
not going to work and just having sex
not going to work and just having sex with everyone i don't know if that's
with everyone i don't know if that's
with everyone i don't know if that's you can only dream you can only dream
you can only dream you can only dream
you can only dream you can only dream right exactly
right exactly
right exactly okay so he got his degree in psychology
okay so he got his degree in psychology
okay so he got his degree in psychology and then he went into the doctoral
and then he went into the doctoral
and then he went into the doctoral program at nyu's medical school in the
program at nyu's medical school in the
program at nyu's medical school in the brain
brain
brain research lab so this dude is legit this
research lab so this dude is legit this
research lab so this dude is legit this is legit he's science you know
is legit he's science you know
is legit he's science you know so when he was there
so when he was there
so when he was there he focused on the brain's reaction to
he focused on the brain's reaction to
he focused on the brain's reaction to things like geometric shapes and colors
things like geometric shapes and colors
things like geometric shapes and colors like he wanted to see
like he wanted to see
like he wanted to see he wanted to watch people's brains and see
he wanted to watch people's brains and see
he wanted to watch people's brains and see what they did when they looked at
what they did when they looked at
what they did when they looked at certain things like how does
certain things like how does
certain things like how does how does the world around us affect
how does the world around us affect
how does the world around us affect how our brain fires
how our brain fires
how our brain fires which i i i do in general think that's
which i i i do in general think that's
which i i i do in general think that's such an interesting topic but it feels
such an interesting topic but it feels
such an interesting topic but it feels like something that would come straight
like something that would come straight
like something that would come straight out of the 60s it's like completely i
out of the 60s it's like completely i
out of the 60s it's like completely i was just on acid does my brain also look
was just on acid does my brain also look
was just on acid does my brain also look like it was just on acid yeah yeah
like it was just on acid yeah yeah
like it was just on acid yeah yeah completely yeah can i can i hear colors
completely yeah can i can i hear colors
completely yeah can i can i hear colors the way that i can when i'm absolutely
the way that i can when i'm absolutely
the way that i can when i'm absolutely high
high
high yeah the problem that he had though is
yeah the problem that he had though is
yeah the problem that he had though is that he struggled with how
that he struggled with how
that he struggled with how the word that this article used was
the word that this article used was
the word that this article used was square he struggled with how square
square he struggled with how square
square he struggled with how square scientific research was like it was it
scientific research was like it was it
scientific research was like it was it was
was too strict and by the book
was too strict and by the book
was too strict and by the book yeah and so he ended up going back to
yeah and so he ended up going back to
yeah and so he ended up going back to mexico in 1977 he started teaching
mexico in 1977 he started teaching
mexico in 1977 he started teaching at unam which is where he got his
at unam which is where he got his
at unam which is where he got his undergrad um and then he started doing
undergrad um and then he started doing
undergrad um and then he started doing experiments
experiments
experiments and this is my favorite part of the
and this is my favorite part of the
and this is my favorite part of the story because he got in trouble
story because he got in trouble
story because he got in trouble so i'm gonna get in trouble
so i'm gonna get in trouble
so i'm gonna get in trouble so he believed that he could make
so he believed that he could make
so he believed that he could make children read words on a sheet of paper
children read words on a sheet of paper
children read words on a sheet of paper even though they weren't using their
even though they weren't using their
even though they weren't using their eyes
eyes
eyes that's amazing did he do it no well he
that's amazing did he do it no well he
that's amazing did he do it no well he got in trouble because they did see
got in trouble because they did see
got in trouble because they did see things but it wasn't words
things but it wasn't words um okay unfortunately so
um okay unfortunately so
um okay unfortunately so these were kids that were perceived to
these were kids that were perceived to
these were kids that were perceived to potentially have some psychic abilities
potentially have some psychic abilities
potentially have some psychic abilities and so you know he was like cover your
and so you know he was like cover your
and so you know he was like cover your eyes or blindfold and then like
eyes or blindfold and then like
eyes or blindfold and then like read what's on this paper but don't use
read what's on this paper but don't use
read what's on this paper but don't use your eyes
your eyes
your eyes so
so
so the children the unintended effect was
the children the unintended effect was
the children the unintended effect was that they started to see
that they started to see
that they started to see cosas feas or ugly things like dead
cosas feas or ugly things like dead
cosas feas or ugly things like dead people
people
people yo what now
like collectively they all said this
like collectively they all said this
like collectively they all said this yeah dude
yeah dude
yeah dude their parents were so mad
their parents were so mad
their parents were so mad i'd be like what the did i sign
i'd be like what the did i sign
i'd be like what the did i sign my kid up for their parents were
my kid up for their parents were
my kid up for their parents were pissed and like pulled their kids out
pissed and like pulled their kids out
pissed and like pulled their kids out of this experiment and obviously
of this experiment and obviously
of this experiment and obviously grinberg's very upset but for a very
grinberg's very upset but for a very
grinberg's very upset but for a very different reason and then like his
different reason and then like his
different reason and then like his colleagues are starting to question
colleagues are starting to question
colleagues are starting to question if he actually knows what he's doing
if he actually knows what he's doing
if he actually knows what he's doing yeah well
yeah well
yeah well what was what was his like methodology
what was what was his like methodology
what was what was his like methodology here like what was he
here like what was he
here like what was he was he priming them to think about scary
was he priming them to think about scary
was he priming them to think about scary stuff like what no what was he showing
stuff like what no what was he showing
stuff like what no what was he showing them that could even possibly
them that could even possibly
them that could even possibly be linked to this i'm not sure exactly
be linked to this i'm not sure exactly
be linked to this i'm not sure exactly how he was doing this my only guess is
how he was doing this my only guess is
how he was doing this my only guess is that
that
that in the absence of any stimuli your brain
in the absence of any stimuli your brain
in the absence of any stimuli your brain starts to create stimuli
starts to create stimuli
starts to create stimuli sure okay that makes sense so like if
sure okay that makes sense so like if
sure okay that makes sense so like if there's that thing where if you stare at
there's that thing where if you stare at
there's that thing where if you stare at your own reflection
your own reflection
your own reflection for a really long time it starts to look
for a really long time it starts to look
for a really long time it starts to look warped and terrifying
warped and terrifying
warped and terrifying yeah yeah so i i my my guess is that it
yeah yeah so i i my my guess is that it
yeah yeah so i i my my guess is that it was something like that but
was something like that but
was something like that but but it's entirely possible that he had
but it's entirely possible that he had
but it's entirely possible that he had like made them look at faces and then
like made them look at faces and then
like made them look at faces and then put a blindfold on and all of a sudden
put a blindfold on and all of a sudden
put a blindfold on and all of a sudden you know right who knows okay okay
you know right who knows okay okay
you know right who knows okay okay horrifying horrifying
horrifying horrifying
horrifying horrifying all right so he uh
all right so he uh
all right so he uh he got he got upset so he didn't really
he got he got upset so he didn't really
he got he got upset so he didn't really know what to do because he
know what to do because he
know what to do because he was super drawn to the rational thinking
was super drawn to the rational thinking
was super drawn to the rational thinking aspects of science and academia
aspects of science and academia
aspects of science and academia but at the same time he felt like those
but at the same time he felt like those
but at the same time he felt like those same things that he loved about it and
same things that he loved about it and
same things that he loved about it and rationality
rationality
rationality worked against trying to learn more
worked against trying to learn more
worked against trying to learn more about how human consciousness worked
about how human consciousness worked
they were too strict to do the kind of research he wanted to do but he did enjoy that research because
it's strenuous and rigorous and it's you know i feel i feel like if you want to have if you want
to study something like that you have to have imagination like you have to be be creative and
A lot of times science, some would argue, is not you don't get to be creative.
You've got to have to follow the rules.
Exactly.
And I think that that is I think that's something that he ran up against because there were people who were definitely on his side and he had some like high powered allies and he was really good at bringing money into the school.
He was good at getting grants and that sort of thing.
But when he started doing these experiments that either kind of went off the rails or couldn't or he wouldn't let them be replicated by other scientists, people started kind of raising an eyebrow.
Like he was super popular with his students, obviously.
And some of those students worked with him in his lab, but he wouldn't let the students who worked with him talk to anyone about what they were actually working on.
Interesting.
And like, yeah, he wouldn't let.
He wouldn't let other scholars try to corroborate the results that they were coming up with.
So then people were like, well, we we don't know if it's legit if you won't let us try to get the right results.
It's a little too secretive.
Like I could understand, like not wanting to like sway anybody or like create bias if everyone's talking to each other.
But someone's got to know what you're doing for us to believe how this works.
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
And at some point, like it's one thing to want to keep your secret secrets until you're ready.
But at some point, like you do have to release what you're doing.
Yeah.
OK, so during this point, Greenberg had also become really interested in shamanism that had started since like his first trip to Israel.
He got really interested in this and he started taking part in practices like meditation and hypnosis and hallucination.
He was taking hallucinogenics.
He would take sessions from other people, but he would also lead his own practices.
And then all of a sudden.
Super randomly in 1975, he was suddenly invited to Los Pinos, which is where the Mexican president and his administration operates.
Oh, hmm.
OK, I'd start getting nervous.
I know.
I'd be like, I'm sick.
I can't.
Oh, no.
I'm too good, I think.
Oh, dear.
Oh, dear.
So it turns out that the president's sister, Margarita Lopez Portillo, was a fan and wanted to meet him.
OK.
And she also wanted Greenberg to meet a woman known as Doña Pachita.
OK.
Now, Doña Pachita was a lottery ticket seller and a cabaret singer.
But like all of us, she diversified and she was best known as being a healer.
who could do spiritual surgery using just a rusty hunting knife.
Hmm.
I don't believe that.
Maybe she's right, but I would have to see that in person.
I'd like to see the results of somebody.
Also, spiritual surgery but needing a physical tool seems backwards to me.
It sounds like she used it as like an. Is it athame?
Is that how you pronounce the word?
I've only ever seen it.
Athame?
Athame.
It's like a place to focus the energy into.
Like a wand.
Like a wand.
Like a wand.
You know, but not as whimsical.
I thought you meant she was like channeling the world to tell her how she should perform a surgery with a hunting knife.
Yeah, no, no.
I think she was like, no, you're right.
No, I said that.
I said that in an unclear way.
No, the possibilities are endless.
I think it was like a lightning.
It was like a lightning rod for energy.
Okay, that makes a lot more sense where she's not just stabbing people with a rusty hunting knife.
No, not that I know of.
And going, I healed you.
Yeah.
Okay.
So like spiritual surgery is still a thing that people claim to be able to do.
It is not viewed well.
It usually, I would say, is done in theory, allegedly, by grifters who are trying to take your money.
Pray upon people who are in positions where they are looking for hope.
I know somebody who does spiritual surgery.
Oh.
And I, to their face, call bullshit often.
Okay.
But I think they, at least the person I know, they really think it works.
I don't think they think they're a grifter at all.
And I'm like, that's insane to me.
I mean, I don't know.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe I'm wrong.
But I have yet to see good results.
Let's put it that way.
I'm not an expert on this.
I think that there is a pretty big intersection between things like healing touch and Reiki and spiritual surgery.
But I think that healing touch and Reiki works.
And I think that from what I understand, and I'm sure if you are. I'm sure if you are listening and you know more, and I'm sure there is someone who knows way more than I do, please set us and me straight.
But it sounds like the claims at least made from Doña Pachita were like, I am replacing your liver with a different liver.
That's what I'm talking about.
That kind of thing.
That's what I'm. That's what I. Yeah.
Because I, in case anyone here needs clarification on my thoughts, I'm a big believer in the power of the mind.
Of course.
And I'm a big believer in. Me too.
I'm a big believer in meditating and a big believer in manifesting.
So I'm not saying that can't be true.
Yeah.
But exactly what you're saying of I can reverse your organ failure.
And I'm like, I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, look, if this is all you can do, like if our healthcare system broken, if you cannot afford anything and have at, as long as you are not going to. Yeah, no judgment.
Yeah.
No, not at all.
Not at all.
I'm hesitant to believe.
That's all.
So, but look, like thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people went to visit her and vouched for her and said like she. She must be doing something right.
She fixed me.
She, you know, I wasn't able to have children.
I got pregnant.
I wasn't able to walk.
I can walk now.
She cured my cancer.
Like tons of claims.
Actually, the jazz musician Charles Mingus went and saw her.
Okay.
Because he had ALS and could not play his double bass and was, you know, unable to do life the way he used to.
And he went and visited her and she did surgery on him and he felt cured.
Wow.
Okay.
You know what?
Then fuck my thoughts.
Okay.
Good for you.
But he also like passed away shortly after.
So, you know, but again, I don't know.
What a mess.
What a mess.
You know what?
I hope.
You know what?
And even if that stuff works, I'm charging my laptop.
Yeah.
Even if that stuff does work, we would never know for sure because then she would also get whisked away to the White House, wouldn't she?
No, it's true.
No, you're totally right.
So what do I fucking know?
You're totally right.
So, but Grinberg believed her.
Like she invited him to come be with her while she did these to take notes, to document what was going on.
And he said,
he said that she was capable of, quote, materializing and dematerializing objects, organs, and tissue.
That's incredible.
That is pretty incredible if it's true.
Yeah.
Amazing.
So, so also, Doña Petita would occasionally get in trouble with the government because she was, quote, practicing voodoo rites, which I guess was no-no or frowned upon or illegal.
So, like, people from the government would come.
They would come looking for her, and no matter how hard they looked for her, she disappeared.
Like, for long periods of time, she would just disappear.
And everywhere they looked, she just was not there.
And then as soon as they stopped looking for her, she was back.
So, there was the belief that she had just dematerialized herself, which is amazing.
Which, like, she can just, like, run away or, like, drive off or something.
But I like how they're like, no, no, this is, she must be her own ghost.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, again, I don't, I don't know for sure.
I don't know.
But I love the idea that she yoinked herself out of existence for as long as those guys were looking for her.
Let's say I hope it's true.
That feels like a, that would certainly rouse the crowd.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
So, because of this and, like, all of the work he's done up until this point and his work with Doña Petita, he developed a theory called,
"Synturgic Theory."
The word is "synturgy."
He made it up.
It's a combination of the words "synthesis" and "energy."
Okay.
And, essentially, this is where I'm going to just, like, dumb it way down, because I'm not going to be using words, like, I'm not going to be saying "neurophysiology" and, like, all of that stuff. Okay?
Thank you.
Thank you for knowing my spirit.
Also, just because I think people glaze over.
I think everyone gets, I think, you know, it can be explained, everyone gets it.
But, like, I just think that it's just, it requires more active listening than I think a lot of us have the energy for.
Yes.
Yes.
Okay.
So, here's what he thought.
Essentially, Em, he thought we lived in a matrix. That's the long and short of it. He believed we lived in a matrix. So he thought that there was an energy matrix called the lattice that permeates the entire universe. It contains all possible information in a holographic form.
And he believed that our brains are not just perceiving the world and like, you know, taking in images and flipping them back upside down, upside right and putting them in our brains.
He believes that our brains are actually translators taking in the energetic field around us and then filtering and organizing the energetic field and creating what we believe is reality.
So I want to pause and applaud you because I know that you you made that sound like you just said it one time, but I know you probably sat with that for 45 minutes and tried to exactly write that sentence.
I've been so nervous for so long.
I just want to like acknowledge that, like, I know what what efforts you went through to try to say that in one concise statement.
You're very sweet. Thank you for thank you for that.
Does it sort of make does it sort of make sense?
Yes, it does sort of make sense.
It sort of makes sense.
So, like.
Yeah, so he believed that everything that we see around us is real, but the specific things that we are seeing and feeling and, you know, hearing with all of our senses may be as dependent on each of our own individual brains as it is on the actual world around us.
I mean, it's if tell me if I'm wrong, but I'm kind of understanding it as that forever theory of like, is my red your red?
Exactly. Yes.
It's like you could be blue.
To me.
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah, totally.
Totally.
And in his framework, what we see as objects or space or whatever is really a distortion of the lattice around us caused by the way that our brain processes it.
So, like, the way that I think of it is because it's because people use the word the matrix, I kind of picture like a neon green three dimensional like parallel lines.
Agreed.
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
And then.
I picture our individual brains taking fingers, reaching out into that grid and starting to, like, pull lines together into different shapes and creating like a tree and then creating a bird.
And that's God's job, right?
That's God's God's job.
It just morphs some of those lines and other things.
That's kind of what I picture this is saying.
OK.
So he believed that people who were really.
Good at this and had high levels of what he called neural coherence, which you could get through, like meditation or specific mental states that you could be.
And if you were really good at this, you would be able to interact more directly with the lattice itself, with the grid, the matrix itself, potentially explaining.
This miraculous phenomena that like Donia Pachita could potentially do.
He believed that she was actually so in tune and like at a higher level of being that she could manipulate the lattice, the matrix to create a new liver, to improve someone's uterus and and to actually make herself bleep out for a while and just sort of like become part of the lattice.
Because she had a really high level of like vibration with the whole.
Thing, I understand the words you're saying, but the theory I was down with until this part and now I don't.
So when I say I don't believe it, it doesn't mean I don't understand you.
I, they lost me.
It's a bridge to our is like I was down with like, oh yeah, we live in a matrix.
Like that's pretty similar to like, oh, we live in a simulation, but I could see that, but then all of a sudden it's like, oh, so she's now she can also pluck the strings and unplug them and pluck them and and do a little knitting with them and make her own things.
That's right.
I'm like, I'm like that.
That.
Part's a little silly for me, but yeah, whatever.
Look, I mean, totally.
I, it, and he, a lot of people felt the exact same way that, that you feel.
Um, one, one thing I was researching, they were talking about, they were using all of the space that exists, like people like there's, you know, we're made up of atoms, molecules, and there's space between all of that.
Like there's space between all of.
Mm-hmm.
Our electrons or space.
There's so much space actually.
And everything is like 99.99% of everything is mostly just empty space.
And so they're sort of implying that well, with all that much space, there's room to like move around and move stuff around.
And again, I like, I get it on a intellectual level, but my gut, my gut wants it to be true, but it would be real gnarly.
It like, it would be a very.
Interesting conversation to have if it were real, but I got me a hunch and I disagree, by the way, do you see where, like my true crime story is absolutely just like woo wooing back into your.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
I don't, I don't know how we did that.
We did not discuss, uh, ahead of time.
It happens a lot.
There was you and I, after the last time that you and I recorded, you just sent me a picture of like your like lucky number had just shown up.
And right when I got off the phone with you, I looked in my lucky number had just shown up.
Oh, get out.
Well, that's amazing.
That's perfect.
All right.
So now here's the experiment.
He was like, this is the first level of the experiment that he would end up kind of trying to replicate his entire life.
So in this day and age, um, we're all just trying to be better.
People are trying to feel better.
We're trying to be, feel more healthy, um, drinking more water.
We talk about that a lot, getting some movement in and our vitamins, but people miss their liver health.
And it's so important.
I've been researching this too.
Um, your liver affects literally everything, your health of your liver.
It affects your energy, your digestion, how your skin looks, even, um, your metabolism.
And it's time we give it some love.
Dose for your liver is a clinically backed liver health liquid supplement taken in a daily two ounce shot.
And it tastes just like fresh squeezed orange juice can confirm.
Um, as soon as I had it in the fridge, uh, it went missing and Alison drink it.
What does the liver even do?
It is your body's filter.
So it processes everything that you consume and performs over 500 daily functions like energy production, digestion, fat metabolism, vitamin storage, all things that I desperately need.
Help with it's got real results.
They have two double blind placebo controlled studies showing its positive impact on liver enzyme levels.
I was like, hell yeah, I'm in, I'm into that.
Um, if you're ready to give your liver, the support it deserves, head to dose daily.co/drink or enter drink to get 35% off your first subscription.
Your body does so much for you.
So let's do something for it.
That's D O S E D a I L Y dot C O slash drink for 35% off your first month subscription and drink it before your girlfriend does.
he developed an experiment that he believed showed some of the first steps toward proving
that telepathy exists he called it transferred potential oh love that love it great name better
than sinthergy or whatever that was that was crazy sinter gm get the made-up word right
okay so he had two people uh that would meditate together and that was like to kind of synchronize
them get them on you know get them all connected and then he would put them in separate shielded
rooms they would not be able to see each other they would not be able to see anything that was
going on in the other person's room okay and then in one of their rooms a light would flash
and the other person's brain would show a corresponding electrical spike
in response to the light despite the fact that they were not the one who saw the light
i feel like at some point this came across my desk and i've heard about this yeah i um i feel like
so in college i one of my like senior thesis papers was about um esp oh hell yeah so you
definitely have heard of this i feel like i have heard this or at least there was like a replicated
experiment well and also this gets into a lot of the twin studies stuff too um so i think that this
i mean this is not an abnormal test um but i think like what is it like the minneapolis twin studies
or something like that there i think they were done in i think they were done in minnesota
i feel like i should know what that is maybe i've covered that i don't know
it was like an in earnest study of twins and like the connection and the the odd things that happen
between twins like you know one like they lose touch for 20 years one gets their arm cut off the
other one suddenly feels a stab of pain kind of stuff right i i'm thinking of um the that
crazy true crime case with the triplets where they went where they all found each other
that's wild insane but the idea it's the same kind of idea of like they're connected somehow
in a way that most people aren't and we're not fully sure how it happens like this all sort of
plays in the same sandbox a little bit it's very odd yeah it's very very odd um okay so
uh he would do this experiment multiple times it became famous and he stated that whenever he did
it overall about a quarter of his subjects showed that quote transferred potential so 75 but 25
did i feel like that's still a big chunk am i crazy that like there's a one in four chance that
you're gonna get it i think it's a big chunk i think it is a big chunk um this also seems to be
one of the experiments that he wouldn't let people come in and visit when he was doing them
and so one of the criticisms is that there's no way of no like they can see the brain scans that
he had from each of the participants that showed that there was a spike for both of them okay but
there was no way for people to know if he hadn't just faked it and also like turned a light on on
the other person's room as well and so the brain spike was caused because he turned lights on in
both rooms right right right right that totally makes sense so but but let's say this is all
legit and this is what happened he felt like this showed the existence of that lattice being all
around us and it connected our minds the lattice is this person sees a light
you're not seeing the light you're not seeing the light you're not seeing the light you're not
but the lattice is connected to this person too because they they meditated together and so this
person's brain is reacting in my mind if we're doing like the laser green grid kind of thing
i imagine on one end someone's like plucking it like a guitar string and the vibration plucks
them back exactly that's exactly yep you got it that's exactly right i mean i am a scientist you
are a scientist i'm just saying okay okay
so interestingly uh anyone who knows anything about the cia knows that the cia was doing
some real woo woo stuff uh in the 60s and 70s yeah that's right they're also doing something called
project stargate uh okay who just gets to name them who do you think gets to pick stargate versus
like like i know i'm fascinated by the names they always sound so impressive and then you
realize that it's like just dudes sitting in a room going like i wonder if i can think real hard
and someone else will notice well also like as an actress you know that they um the tv shows and
movies like they all have a fake name when they're filming or at least bigger productions do so
nobody finds out where they actually are yeah and i'm always like how'd you pick that like i i used
to like some of that makes sense i i worked on um when i did stranger things that it used to be
called the montauk project which makes sense because it was like based on project montauk
yeah but then there's other ones where like
um ant-man was like cherry blue and i'm like why why or uh spider-man was uh the summer of george
and i'm like who's picking these that's i know that joker was romeo was the secret title like
how's it happen like some of them like had some like oh that i get that that's kind of like a nod
or like someone might be able to pick up on it but the random ones i'm like how like who's who
was there a vote or did someone just say two random words together or like was it an
interview or was it just like two random words together or like was it an interview or was it an
inside joke you know right right or yeah yeah i never know i was assumed romeo and joker was like
this it's the same number of letters but i don't know if that's oh i have i have no idea i have no
idea but um anyway okay so i'm gonna pretend the same people who pick things like romeo and cherry
blue also picked stargate yeah totally project stargate it sounds cool i think they want to
sound cool and they want to sound like they're working on a cool thing of course um project
stargate was um a cia project where they were exploring
the military applications of psychic phenomena this is when they were trying to see if you could
like remote view and talk to people through your brain in korea so because his work seemed like it
might someday create a reliable biological method for non-local communication okay this is what they
were trying to do so there's like released cia documents that mention him they were keeping an
awareness of what he was doing okay but like imagine being this guy and people not that they
didn't believe in you but no one really thought it was going to get this far and all of a sudden
it's like no the cia keeps tabs on me so like i'm fucking close yeah one of my favorite stories about
the cia documents is uh you know the author philip k dick so he uh was constantly apparently saying
that like the cia was tapping his phone he was very paranoid that the cia was onto him and apparently i
i haven't checked but the story is that one day like a family member asked for his files the cia
files and they released them and it was just every time that philip k dick reached out to the cia to
accuse them of following him like they hadn't actually been but it was just like but also
knowing the cia the way we do which is only through leaked stories that's also probably fake and they
probably had like a full documentation but they just gave a fake one to him but it still is funny
and it makes me laugh that's so funny
that's so funny you know you're the second person who's mentioned his name this week
yo what's going on what's going on telepathy connected neural network
all right so oh i don't know if you forgot he disappeared one day oh right
he disappeared so a few days before he went missing
grinberg called his daughter who has my favorite favorite name which is astutia i think astutia
is like such a beautiful name what does it mean no idea it does sound like a sneeze to me
oh yeah that's fair yeah astutia it's the female is it russian i think it's sounds like i can
imagine a russian woman astutia astutia it might it might have like polish origins i don't know it
also sounds spanish to me but maybe that's just because it ends in a uh and i am an ignorant
american
um but anyway so he called astutia uh to tell her about a trip that he was going to take to
katmandu and he was going to reportedly try to do this transferred potential experiment
across continents so he's committing to oh yeah he's taking it to the next level baby good for him
so uh in 1994 extended family and friends and students of his realized that they had not heard
from him in the first place and he was like oh my god i don't know what to do with this
in a while and as they started checking in with each other they discovered that his daughter his
two brothers and his assistant a woman named ruth said so who was super loyal to him they had not
seen him either so grinberg was last seen on december 8th 1994 he was expected to show up to
a birthday party they were throwing for him because his birthday was in a few days but he failed to
appear at his birthday party and he was like oh my god i don't know what to do with this
Okay.
honey trap honey trap she was a honey trap um one of one of his brothers said that grinberg
actually feared he would be murdered oh shit uh and he said this during his final visit with
that brother so there's also weird stuff where she was telling people weird things
so she apparently told they had like multiple properties she told the watchman at their house
in uh in morelos don't come back to work because her husband had flown to guadalajara
but then she told uh his stepmom a few days later that he was actually in campeche and then she was
supposed to fly to nepal with him but then someone reported seeing her in tijuana on the beach
and like she was reportedly linked to a night watchman at a school through some telephone
calls that were placed in mexico in the u.s and apparently this guy had like paramilitary
backgrounds like there was a whole time there's like a whole
there's a whole rabbit hole oh my god of her the plot twist is that that cabaret singer has been
blipping her in and out of the world that's right chucking her all over the place have you heard the
theory that uh earth and our universe is actually inside a black hole no but honestly that i believe
of all the things you've said today yeah that that one doesn't uh surprise me anymore it uh it makes
me lose sleep it's like why why have we not had any contact with any other intelligent life like
the fermi paradox oh i didn't cover that at some point where that blue that i never thought about
until i looked at all the numbers and it's like why haven't we heard from anybody yeah one of the
theories is that we're actually inside a black hole and it's why our universe apparently spins
a different direction than most of that like it's just and it's almost like our internet
connection is cut off that's exactly that's it yep it makes me not able to breathe sometimes
so it's like oh maybe they're just they got they got blipped into a different
black hole anyway some people also believe that she killed him and then like fled
it does feel like the easier option yeah like it feels it occam's razor it feels like the
the least assumptions required is that she had something to do that i do not think it can be
ignored that she also disappeared yeah you know that's fucking weird if i mean it feels like
if the easiest one to me is that she killed him and then ran off before anyone would find out
but i could also see the government being like she's also like could compromise the case yeah
she knows too much i mean one of the one of the things that people raise is like what would she
have gotten from it because it seemed like she cashed a check for a thousand dollars from his
publisher um but that was it it didn't seem like she you know had a ton of money coming to her
especially since she disappeared and so it's not like someone's going to be able to get her money
back because someone emptied out his bank accounts and then she disappeared it's just it it it doesn't
seem like she had anything to gain but also maybe it was random and she actually didn't have anything
to gain but did it anyway okay okay so here are some other theories let me scroll down my notes
please hold so part of it some people were thinking that it had to do with the government but not for reasons why you think
okay so let's look at some of the other theories we're going to talk about so let's look at some of the other theories you're going to talk about
so let's look at some of the other theories we're going to talk about
so let's look at some of the other theories you're going to talk about it feels like one of the more
it feels like one of the more
it feels like one of the more reasonable things
reasonable things
reasonable things so an investigator named clemente padilla
so an investigator named clemente padilla
so an investigator named clemente padilla took on grinberg's case and this guy was
took on grinberg's case and this guy was
took on grinberg's case and this guy was like a superstar detective he
like a superstar detective he
like a superstar detective he i don't if i'm not mistaken up until
i don't if i'm not mistaken up until
i don't if i'm not mistaken up until that point he had solved every case he
that point he had solved every case he
that point he had solved every case he took on
took on
took on i agree some lebron james i don't know
i agree some lebron james i don't know
i agree some lebron james i don't know so um so he checked to see first and
so um so he checked to see first and
so um so he checked to see first and foremost if grinberg had been seen in
foremost if grinberg had been seen in
foremost if grinberg had been seen in kathmandu and realized that no he had
kathmandu and realized that no he had
kathmandu and realized that no he had not
not
not uh no airline had any record of
uh no airline had any record of
uh no airline had any record of grinberg using a plane ticket and
grinberg using a plane ticket and
grinberg using a plane ticket and passport control did not show him moving
passport control did not show him moving
passport control did not show him moving through
through
through evidence and
evidence and
evidence and eventually
eventually
eventually padilla claimed that his investigation
padilla claimed that his investigation
padilla claimed that his investigation was shut down
was shut down
was shut down by high-ranking officials within the
by high-ranking officials within the
by high-ranking officials within the mexican government
mexican government
mexican government okay and that was that about his
okay and that was that about his
okay and that was that about his investigation he just
investigation he just
investigation he just had to stop he just had to stop wow
had to stop he just had to stop wow
had to stop he just had to stop wow so one of the cool things about
so one of the cool things about
so one of the cool things about grinberg's daughter astutia
grinberg's daughter astutia
grinberg's daughter astutia my favorite name astutia sneezy of the
my favorite name astutia sneezy of the
my favorite name astutia sneezy of the dwarves i love her she's my favorite
dwarves i love her she's my favorite
dwarves i love her she's my favorite dwarf she was in a band called heaven and
dwarf she was in a band called heaven and
dwarf she was in a band called heaven and earth she was the lead singer and she
earth she was the lead singer and she
earth she was the lead singer and she was badass and she remains badass to
was badass and she remains badass to
was badass and she remains badass to this day
this day
this day so because she toured and was in uh was
so because she toured and was in uh was
so because she toured and was in uh was the lead singer of a band she had media
the lead singer of a band she had media
the lead singer of a band she had media connections
connections
connections and was able to get on tv and like say
and was able to get on tv and like say
and was able to get on tv and like say hey my dad is missing
hey my dad is missing
hey my dad is missing can you keep an eye out for him that's
can you keep an eye out for him that's
can you keep an eye out for him that's awesome it's so cool
awesome it's so cool
awesome it's so cool and people started calling in but like
and people started calling in but like
and people started calling in but like every single
every single
every single call just wasn't it none of it checked
call just wasn't it none of it checked
call just wasn't it none of it checked out and it's also kind of amazing how
how many people look like each other and have the same names.
And it just,
there just wasn't anything.
I'm sure.
And also the description could just be like brown hair,
brown eyes.
And then it's like,
well now that's everybody.
Yes.
Yes.
And if you look at a picture of Grinberg and you look at a picture of like
Philip K.
Dick,
and then also you look at a picture of who's the guy who wrote game of
thrones,
HH Riley,
whatever his name is.
They all look identical.
Yeah.
They all look like each other.
Perfect.
So,
all right.
So here's some more because we don't know.
Spoiler alert.
We don't know.
We don't know.
We don't know.
We've never found him.
It just sounds,
it sounds like the government just swiped him just to knock him off the
planet.
They,
he got yeeted,
yeeted from,
from existence.
And like right before he was supposed to do this massive experiment.
So a lot of people think that the timing is very suspicious.
I see.
So,
um,
the person who wrote the American scholar article said quote,
I once heard from a person claiming to have seen Grinberg in January of
1995 in Western Mexico,
boarding a spaceship made of three perfectly delineated spheres.
So this is like kind of where it's at now.
So,
okay.
We've really,
um,
the it's devolved into,
he is either an alien or friends with them or they're like their little play
thing that they're now taking away.
Yeah.
That's right.
That's right.
So,
okay.
So there's the CIA,
NASA hype,
this,
which is pretty popular for obvious reasons.
People think that Grinberg was either abducted by the CIA or by NASA,
which I don't know if NASA does a lot of abducting,
but I feel like the CIA does more.
Yeah.
You know,
if we're,
if we're scaling both of them,
I would agree with you.
I feel like NASA is not so interested.
Yeah.
If I have to be babysat by either the CIA or NASA,
I choose NASA.
I mean,
I choose NASA,
but they're not coming.
CIA is.
No,
they're not coming.
Um,
so,
or people think that he was quote recruited slash forced into like American
intelligence.
Um,
because.
But did you see project tail Mary?
I haven't.
And I need to,
it's,
it's similar of like getting recruited for something just because you happen
to be really good at this one thing.
Yeah.
And like,
I love the movie arrival because,
because have you seen arrival?
Amy Adams?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because purely for the scene where she breaks down sentence structure,
I'm on the whiteboard.
I,
sometimes I just watch that scene because it's,
there's actually very,
something very similar in project.
Tell Mary freaking love it.
Like they made that process of being forced to work for the CIA,
like way,
way more fun seeming,
but it was,
um,
it was a very good movie.
I didn't mean to take,
take you away,
but,
but I mean,
I,
I immediately thought that when you said like,
Oh,
and he's just being escorted onto a ship and he's,
this is where this is his job now.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
Yep.
A helicopter comes and lands on your lawn in the middle of the night.
And,
uh,
now you work for the CIA.
and life is over yeah yeah yeah crazy so they so that's a that's a theory um and they think that
the cia's interest wasn't necessarily in his philosophy but more like in the transferred
potential they just wanted to see if he could like communicate to people across the ocean
um because also one of the things that people think about that points to the cia is that
his lab was suddenly seized like all of his i mean come on that alone that actually unless his
wife who in in theory one killed him yeah unless she was trying to make it really look like it was
someone that wasn't her and she destroyed the the lab as a red herring to keep people away
unless she did that it was fully the government totally fully the government he also felt like
there were some people who were following
you
him near the end of his life or the end of before he disappeared but also so there's like sort of a
through line of some mental illness that goes on um he has a brother whose name is i'm gonna find
his name ari talch and he's actually a famous actor in mexico um and ari's wikipedia page says
that he has bipolar and it sounds like maybe
grenier
grenberg may have also some people wonder if he had some mental illness stuff going on
because he was more paranoid he seemed to be getting more and more like manic a little bit
yeah like manic and more kind of out there with his ideas more than normal for him sure so there
and i not to play uh devil's advocate here but i also think that like people who think differently
are often the most creative of problem solver so maybe he really was onto something because of his
mental health i don't know yeah no or absolutely maybe he was manic or you know who knows it could
be both both both could you know both could all be true um yeah so so so that's the idea about like
the cia and all of that there's also an idea that is like incredibly offensive to his family
okay i laugh out of discomfort not because i think it's funny so there is um a spiritual mystic whose
name is
shiva shambho okay and some people believe a little bit like the kirk cobain um who's the
lead singer of weezer you know people think like the lead singer of weezer and kirk cobain are the
same person i'm gonna look it up just because it's gonna kill me his first name is plural which
makes no sense to me rivers cuomo people think that rivers cuomo and um
um mr nirvana are the same person so the same thing is going on here so the recently social
media rumors claimed that grinberg was living in puebla as a mystic named shiva shampo who's
a real person this man is a his own real person his name is jose antonio ramon calderon and they
think that these men are the same man they think that okay grinberg changed his identity and became
shiva shampo based on
similarity that they perceive in the two men's voices and gestures sure i could i could see
people coming up with a story like that because it's like oh he was already so out there and
nobody got him and he needed to go he thought he needed to go into hiding so now he's just
redone himself and yeah i get it but also you said that this guy is a totally other person
yeah he has like a birthday you know like he's okay so yeah yeah he didn't come out of nowhere
he has a mom and you know so like um
and they also went so far as to do biometric studies like they tried to fit people on youtube
have broken this down like it's a real lipstick gate situation all right so
okay like but but i think so it was broken down and i think like 33 percent of their facial markers
matched the the thing that here's the problem with conspiracy theories
is that they're not just like they're not just like they're not just like they're not just like
someone who loves a fun one is like you can never disprove them because it that's not what it's
about it's like well you can't prove that they didn't do this thing so a lot of people believe
that because grinberg was all about the way you perceive reality can be changed people are like
well he changed his genetic markers he became this other he like he changed his whole physical
physical presentation because he's so into it
with this lattice network. So you just, there's no way to say no. Okay. But his brother says that's
stupid and he hates it and it's disrespectful. And he thinks that it doesn't do his brother any
favors. And he reminds people that his brother was, is a real person who did real work and had
brilliant and exciting new ideas that were really, really different from a lot of things that people
at the time were thinking and trying to reduce him down to, Oh, I think that he might be this
other guy I heard of once is right. It's just also, it's just condescending. It's like, yeah.
Yes. So there's essentially, it's just like the one that I did last time with, you know,
the boat where it's like, we don't, we don't know what happened. We don't know where his wife went.
We don't know where he went, but what his love and mystery. Oh, we love a mystery.
And like,
what his family really wants people to take away is that he was a whole person, just like the,
just like the people in your story, Em, who were like whole people who had this awful thing happen
to them. He was a man who existed and had these incredible ideas. And his daughter actually helped
re-release some of his writings, like six volumes, I think through Penguin, they released some of his
work, um, to like,
raise awareness of what he did because he isn't super well known. I, I don't feel like this was
my first time ever hearing about him. And I love this kind of stuff. And it, and it's not like I
have my finger on the pulse of like, you know, woo stuff on the internet, but I, I feel like
it doesn't make sense that we haven't heard about him more, you know?
I mean, I guess it's if, if the government took him, then they got exactly what they wanted by
people slowly forgetting who he is, but yeah, that's true. Um, but yeah, you would think,
um, someone would, maybe someone is secretly out there carrying on the torch and carrying on with
his stuff. Dude, that's my hope because in my head, he, he went missing and he is fine and
happy somewhere floating and someone snuck in like the next generation snuck, some young buck snuck
in, took all of his stuff and secreted away and is like carrying on his experiments. Yeah. I mean, I,
I hope that he absolutely was actually in charge of his disappearance and he just left it in some
cryptic way for another, um, or, or maybe it wasn't, didn't have to be a cryptic writing.
Maybe he was like, for those who have the eyes to see I'll find you in the lattice. Oh man. And
we'll talk there. That's such a cool bumper sticker. I would, I would put that on, like,
I really, I really feel like this is his work is really fascinating. And I think that,
um, he has a lot in common with Philip K Dick. They both talked about the idea of like this being
a simulation well before that was a super popular idea. Yeah. And I also have really simplified all
of this way down. So if you are listening and are like an expert on this topic, I really hope I did
at least a decent job of trying to explain it because there's so much more to it. And I highly
recommend people take a really deep.
Look at it. Um, because he was fascinating. His work was fascinating. Um, and yeah, I hope I just
wasn't like, I hope I wasn't unintentionally disrespectful in my attempt to make this
like understandable, uh, same to me about the entire disability community. Um, so we just like
are stumbling over ourselves in our attempts here, but I was like, I was like, man, I'm rusty. I like
clearly don't use like this verbiage all that often for me to be like wondering what, what I'm
saying. But no,
I, I, I personally think you did a fine job. I won't thank you, but I I'm love it. Love a theory,
love a mystery, love a, someone discovered something and now they're missing. There was,
um, there was a guy online right now. He, within the last year discovered a way to create energy
off of recycled plastic, like no gasoline needed anymore. Like just like how to energy off of
plastic. Oh my God. And so that way, not only are you getting us clean,
clean energy without any fuels. Yeah. Um, or any like, uh, like fossil fuels, but also,
um, you're, you're also recycling at the same time. And like, he even showed it like on videos,
how he can like, like turn a car on, like he put, put it in the, in the gas tank of his car
and the car works. Like everyone in the comments is like, I need you to like,
let us know that you're alive and you do not have any ideation. And because everyone is convinced,
the government's coming. Like you cannot just post that on TikTok and not expect to go missing
right away. And then for a while, he literally did go missing, but he just stopped posting for
a little bit. You can't do that, bro. Everyone was like, please, where are you? Where are you?
are you i mean like the smartest thing he did was publicly make himself known so that if he
goes missing we all know what because oh man but he like he if you if you go look it up but he
really has done it and it's like well you are either going to be a billionaire or not alive
um i just feel like i feel like unfortunately we live in a hellscape where those are the only two
options in my brain yeah no that's so no that's it that's that's it he needs to open source his
information if he doesn't want to patent it make a million dollars because 100 if they take him
that's it then that's now that's gone agreed oh well you did a great job telling the story
oh thank you em and thank you for your story i was that's thank you for finally connecting those
cropsy dots because i i knew that there was something i was missing in the middle of that
story you know i um i actually i thought about doing it forever ago like a year ago
and then i looked at it and it was just so much longer than i thought and i was like i thought
this guy was supposed to be just like uh i'm in the woods and then just i saw the notes growing
and growing and then when i knew you were going to come on last time i thought oh this would be
a great time and i got overwhelmed again so totally i'm happy that it's i'm happy it's
finally out of the way but in case anybody uh from staten island has anything to say about it
uh please leave a comment let me know if i missed something but otherwise it's it's done there's
no i don't know i'm trying you know i'm just i'm trying because tomorrow's pizza friday obviously
and so like i'm trying to
you know at least a backup i i mean i don't know i'm trying you know i'm just i'm trying because
not eat every sugar before pizza friday because pizza friday they're the size of a quarter bethany
you can have 50 cents the big ones the ones that are the size of the hamburger patties yeah yeah
yeah okay that's better yeah that's an actual that's an actual peppermint patty yeah yeah
versus like these little you know it's not like a quarter it's like a it's like a full dish of
patty you know i see it might tell me what hurt afterwards it's a lot of mint no okay no i respect
it i love it york for my patty but i like the little ones because then i can just keep throwing
them in there like i'm a casino machine like you're a slot machine like i'm a slot machine
um are you do you freeze them yes oh yes yeah you freeze them too i do freeze them i like that do
you first of all do you like frosting but flavor um doesn't matter doesn't matter no it doesn't
matter no it's fine frosting although if i'm eating a cupcake the the frosting is not my main
character see this is a symbiotic relationship because frosting is my main character oh see no
i i've many many times i would argue half the time just take the frosting off and eat the cake okay
um so here's the thing so when we move in together allison can come dennis can come okay okay so we
are symbiotic cupcake partners and it's funny because i've only ever had one other symbiotic
cupcake partner and they weren't we don't talk anymore and i don't know what happened
well because i think they got into the frosting and they were like actually bethany's been onto
something this whole time yeah no totally it's not gonna work anymore so i put cupcakes in the
freezer to make the frosting a little harder so it fights back a little bit more because i like that
that's full nightmare no it's good but so then i just eat yours and then you get cupcake and i get
frosting i mean i really just want cake there have been times where i baked a cake and then people
are you gonna decorate it i'm like this this is it this is the masterpiece is the frosting too sweet
what is it
maybe i don't know yourself you explain yourself hard frosting by itself yeah bite into it uh no i
think i i mean i really i prefer things that are light versus like really rich and so the the like
intense sweetness of frosting is just too much for me and then also if i'm gonna eat frosting
it has to be from a can i cannot fucking stand when people try to make frosting oh yeah don't
get away something to me no get away with your homemade frosting
don't you dare you know what i would love the perfect frosting is not frosting at all it is
the chocolate half of a black and white cookie that's the perfect frosting bro now we're on
the same page i feel like a black and white cookie is just a cupcake that went through a
press that's right it went it just it had a hard day and it fell into one of those pasta rollers
and it came out you know what an even better version of itself do you like the white part
of a black and white cookie because i literally just want a black cookie all the time
i will absolutely eat the white part so we're symbiotic there too as well this is magic this
is magical now here's one more question yeah this is a real make or break friendship like we haven't
already been friends for like a decade how how is what do you feel about artisanal macaroni and
cheese literally fuck off with that don't you dare put troubles did i just mention this to
you recently like there i've had this conversation i'm not kidding it's may 14th the sense of
may 1st i've had this conversation with at least four or five people i don't know what's going on
right now there's an epidemic there must be something going on specifically with the phrase
artisanal mac and cheese specifically that phrase and every time i've said fuck off with that who
the fuck do you think you are i swear to god if someone ever says i'm gonna make you some mac and
cheese here's some breadcrumbs on top how about you go to hell how about if you don't bust out a
blue box with some orange ass noodles on the front of it i don't know what you're doing don't you
mushroom don't put any sort of don't put anything i want a powder well i okay here's i will and i the
only mac and cheese i like from scratch is mine it's the only one i like and it is incredibly
simple because i'm like i want i said mac and cheese yeah yes it's not i don't know where
we fucking thought and crumbs and bacon bits oh don't and the truffle i heard you say truffle
earlier that can absolutely go right in the trash
how dare you well because somebody said to me i was at a restaurant with somebody they're like oh
mac and cheese and i went oh do you eat mac and cheese at restaurants because and i and i said it
actually meet her um but i said that because i was like i've never met a mac and cheese at a
restaurant i enjoyed ever not once because every single one of them is trying to stand out from
the rest which means they're trying to do a thing with it and then they're like well ours has this
type of cheese and i'm like i didn't fucking ask for that look i said i want if i want to
comfort food why am i now at the four seasons that's right that's right i want slop in a bowl
put it in front of me put it in my mouth directly just hose it in like don't you dare i i have like
if i'm going to go to a really nice restaurant and i have been at really nice restaurants
brag and if they
if they're like would you like the mac and cheese there had better be on that menu sponsored by
craft yeah
mac and cheese
i would have so much more respect for you if your mac and cheese at your four michelin star
restaurant is from a box and it's craft macaroni and cheese because i know you know who you are
i am so glad we're on the same page with this i can't believe i it's like you're i mean i know
we just talked about telepathy for the last hour but i really have had this conversation i'm not
kidding with so many people in my life very recently that that is legitimately bizarre
that is very very strange and every single one i've said if you're a mac and cheese fan
if it's not craft or a soul food a true soul food restaurant i don't want it like it's not that
and every person's like oh maybe we should split the mac and cheese how about
no no you have the whole thing yourself because your garbage taste makes you want it
and you know what it's at this point that i feel like i've insulted somebody at a restaurant who's
like oh but you have to try our mac and cheese respectfully no thank you is it is it craft
macaroni and cheese is a craft cheese macaroni i think it's buffalo wild wings or something but
they're kids mac and cheese i think it's a good thing i think it's a good thing i think it's a good thing
i think it's just craft in which case i'd get that great it's not that hard but if they're like
oh you can't because you're over 12 then i'll buy two chop chop yeah exactly i don't know suck it
but i don't know i can't really and i'm gentle listener i'm sorry if like you love artisanal
mac and cheese and we've just hurt your feelings so much but i just got to tell you sometimes you
have to take a stand for something right and i will still i still respect you we can all have
different views but like i just am not going to be able to i can't split the mac and cheese
with you at you know the the five star michelin over expensive restaurant i and you know what
thank you for saying that because um i i agree through and through that if you are a foodie
congratulations oh yeah it ain't me no i um man and you know what i hate sorry we've done this
for way too long the mac and cheese that seems to be said but they put like gruyere and parmesan
and i'm like go away like it i want it i don't want cheese
that is also in like an alfredo or some fancy sandwich like i want just stretchy mozzarella
some stretchy cheddar yep maybe one similar to that if this cheese did not come out of the udder
as an orange powder i don't i don't want it on my mac and cheese if the if the cow didn't go
that's right
you
If the person collecting the cheese did not come back in,
sunglasses off and there is an outline in the powder of where their sunglasses were
like an explosion in the face like a mad scientist it's working well with that everybody i hope
everyone has a great week and i hope you eat mac and cheese that is done right um and thank you
bethany for being here i really appreciate you uh hopping on for two whole episodes and uh what
did you say jerry o'connell i'll be your jerry o'connell any freaking day of the week my dear
perfect uh see everyone for another episode soon yeah and that's why you drink that's what you drink
fall never arrives all at once first the air then the light and slowly the things you love
begin to find each other a jacket meets a dress a hoodie slips beneath a blazer an old cap finds a
new scarf because you don't simply see the light you see the light you see the light you see the
into the season you create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall find fall your way at ross
tammy regularly hauls stuff to her kids at college that's why she shops at bj's wholesale club saving
up to 25 off grocery store prices beef jerky microwave meals laundry pods even they can't
screw up have you met my kids and with bj's gas she gets there for less they call me the road
warrior this is your home road warrior
mom home of the save join for just 20 at bjs.com slash mesquite and save 10 cents per gallon for
six months open soon limited time offer new members only bj's home of the save
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The host deeply loves Zazzle for its wide range of customizable, on-demand gifts across products like mugs, ties, and golf balls.
Over 30 million customers have trusted Zazzle, highlighting its reliability and popularity in custom gift creation.
The host shares a personal connection to Zazzle by referencing a friend’s dog-themed tie, emphasizing how personal and meaningful custom gifts can be.
A memorable urban legend, Cropsey, is explored as a Staten Island-based tale involving an escaped mental hospital patient who preys on campers, blending horror and real historical trauma.
The story ties into the real-life Willow Brook State School, a once-renowned but horrifically underfunded mental institution where patients faced abuse, neglect, and unsanitary conditions.
Geraldo Rivera’s exposé of Willow Brook exposed severe abuses, including lack of staff, poor hygiene, violence, and deliberate disease spread, sparking national awareness.
The exposé played a key role in launching the disability rights movement and led to legal reforms like the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The host promotes Quince and Zazzle as lifestyle brands, with Quince offering ethically made, premium essentials like Turkish towels at accessible prices.
Summary:
The host champions Zazzle as a go-to platform for custom, on-demand gifts, praising its vast product range and over 30 million customers who trust it. They share personal anecdotes, like a friend’s dog-themed tie, to underscore the emotional value of customized items. The discussion shifts to a deep dive on the Cropsey urban legend, rooted in Staten Island’s history and tied to the real-life horrors of the Willow Brook State School—a facility that operated under dire conditions, with severe staff shortages, abuse, and lack of care.
Geraldo Rivera’s investigative exposé revealed systemic neglect, including patient abuse, disease spread, and complete institutional failure, ultimately sparking the disability rights movement and leading to major legislative reform. The host connects this history to modern awareness, emphasizing the need for compassion and accountability. The segment concludes with promotional highlights of Quince, a brand offering ethically made, high-quality essentials like Turkish towels, and a special offer for first-time customers.
The narrative blends personal experience, cultural lore, and social justice, showing how small consumer choices and historical truths can intersect to create meaningful impact.
FAQs
Zazzle is a platform that allows users to create custom gifts on a wide variety of items, such as mugs, tote bags, and even golf balls. It offers a vast selection of products with no out-of-stock items, as everything is made on demand. Over 30 million customers have trusted Zazzle for their gifts, making it a reliable and creative choice for personalized items.
Yes, Zazzle offers customization options for many products, including tissue box covers, shirts, ties, mugs, and more. You can add photos, text, or designs to any item, and the platform is designed to help you create unique, personalized gifts tailored to your preferences.
Zazzle uses a 'made-on-demand' system, which means products are created only when you place your order. This ensures you never receive a discontinued or out-of-stock item. Once your order is placed, Zazzle handles the production and shipping process seamlessly.
Zazzle is currently offering 25% off on your first order. Customers can save 25% when they visit Zazzle.com, making it a great opportunity to create unique, personalized gifts without breaking the bank.
Quince is a brand that creates elevated, everyday essentials like Turkish towels using premium materials such as Mongolian cashmere and organic cotton. Their products are affordable compared to luxury brands, with 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just $50.
Quince products are available at quince.com/slash/drink, where customers also get free shipping and 365-day returns. The brand specializes in high-quality, ethically made items, and is especially popular among travelers to Utah, where it is tied to the filming location of High School Musical 2.
Chat with AI
Loading...
Pro features
Go deeper with this episode
Unlock creator-grade tools that turn any transcript into show notes and subtitle files.